:: The Church Street Practice ::

Below is some useful information on the consulting hours operated by the partners, the practice nurse and the health visitor. We have also provided information visiting hours and prescription services.

General Notes: The morning consulting hours are 8.30am - 10.30am. The afternoon consulting hours are 2.00 - 4.00pm or 4.30 - 6.00pm. Please note that these may vary depending on whether the doctor is on call for home visits and hospital commitments. Some appointments can be made on the day.

Dr. Pearce
Monday to Friday by appointment.

Dr. Murdoch
Monday, Tuesday and Thursday by appointment.

Dr. Paterson
Monday, Wednesday and Friday by appointment.

Dr. Druett
Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday by appointment.

N.B. The variation in doctors' surgery hours is due to their commitment to Dunoon General Hospital and to the on call rota. They are also committed to improving their skills and knowledge and it is compulsory for them to attend a certain number of training sessions every year. This also causes variation in surgery hours.

Practice Nurses
Our practice nurses offer a wide range of services and treatment room duties, including dressings, injections, blood pressure checks, and ear syringing. They also carry out child immunisations and elderly health assessments, and offer travel health advice and immunisations and advice on diabetes, healthier hearts and asthma clinics.

They work closely with your GP to provide diabetic care, and plan to introduce asthma management in the near future. Both our nurses have additional specialist training in family planning and sexual health, and can offer contracaptive advice. Health promotion advice on smoking cessation, weight management, and healthy eating is also provided.

Both our practice nurses are independent qualified prescribers. We also provide a nurse practioner service, currently on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. The nurese practioner will deal with minor illnesses i.e. sore throats, wounds, colds and most infections. She will see patients over 12 years of age. You may be offered this service as an alternative to a doctor's appointment.

Health Visitor
The health visitor is a registered nurse with additional specialist training in family health and family planning. Although she deals mainly with child health she also provides a variety of community and health promotion services, e.g. anti-smoking, weight control, breast and other infant feeding advice etc.

She is based at Dunoon General Hospital but spends much of her day home visiting or running clinics at the hospital.

She may be contacted at the hospital.
[Tel No. 01369 708361]

Delays to Surgeries
Our standard surgery appointment is 10 minutes. If you feel that you have a lot to discuss with the doctor ask the receptionist, when making your appointment, to give you a longer appointment - especially if you require a cervical smear test or more time consuming examination.

Each appointment is allotted to one person. If you wish extra members of your family, or a friend to be seen, please let us know rather than bringing them informally to share your appointment.

If you wish to discuss a member of your family or a friend that is not present then please let us know so that their record is available. We may not be able to give information but can keep a record of your anxieties.

In order to help keep delays in surgery waiting time to a minimum we would ask for your co-operation in the following ways:

NON ATTENDANCE WASTES 10% OF OUR SURGERY TIME - if you cannot attend it is essential that you let us know as early as possible. Persistent non attenders may be contacted. Remember - someone who is ill could have been seen.
If you find you cannot keep your appointment please let us know in advance so that we can fit in someone else and rearrange a time for you.
Late comers may have to wait until there is a natural gap in the appointment schedule, wait till the end of the surgery, or make a fresh appointment.

Note: Appointments may be delayed by the doctor having to leave the surgery to go to an urgent call or to a confinement. Sometimes the doctor has to answer emergency calls or take calls from Hospital Consultants during surgeries. These delays are unavoidable.

Patients can request home visits by telephoning or sending a message to the surgery early in the day, preferably before 10:00a.m.
Calls are done by the duty doctor of the day.

The doctor may phone back to discuss the problem to see if advice or prescription may be more appropriate than a home visit.

Please come to the surgery if at all possible as the doctors can see 3 or 4 people at the surgery in the time taken to do even a local house call, have your records available and can insure urgent prescriptions are obtainable or administered, and have more resources available.

Out of hours is now organised by NHS 24 who take over after 6pm til 8am weekdays, and then over weekends and bank holidays.

If you wish to speak to the doctor on the telephone please give the receptionist all the relevant details so that she may get the necessary information ready for the doctor. We have found this a good way of helping patients.

If you telephone during consulting hours the doctor will have to ring you back later, so please be prepared to wait for the reply or leave an obtainable number.

Insurance medicals, private insurance, passport applications, etc. may be arranged during surgery hours.

A charge will be made for these services. If requesting completion of forms, letters, etc by the doctors please allow a minimum of five working days before collection.

Repeat Prescriptions

Requests for repeat prescriptions should be made at least 2 working days before collection. Prescription slips are provided to facilitate a repeat prescriptions and keep our telephone lines free for emergency calls.

It is the responsibility of the recipient to collect the prescription from the surgery and there is a facility at the desk for this.

The local chemists offer a collection service with which we co-operate. Please note that our responsibility ends when the prescription leaves the surgery.

Our prescribing costs are budgeted and we must not waste money on unnecessarily duplicating dispensed prescriptions.

We are now operating a new appointment system - when you call in you will be asked a couple of questions by the receptionists so that they can offer you the most appropriate clinician to deal with your problem.

If you feel that your request must be dealt with today, and they are unable to arrange this, then your call will be passed on to one of our Practice Nurses who will call you back to try and arrange for you to be seen by the correct person at the correct time.