Charing Surgery

Could the booking of the return call triage please be shortened and absolutely clear. There is one prompt to press 0 given ambiguously/at the wrong time. If you don't remember this it leads to either being cut off or having to retrace. Happened to me this morning. Even with a clear run and shortened input process because I knew the options, it took 3 1/2 minutes to complete a successful call. Thanks

I appreciate that this is a busy surgery and the telephone triage system is very good if you want to see a doctor that day. However, I have found it almost impossible to book an appointment in advance as a general appointment to discuss ongoing care, concerns or to review a condition. I don't want to have to take an appointment from someone who may have an emergency on that day. Also, as the daily appointments are meant to be short and only covering one item, this can be more problematic. I have to take time off work to go to the doctor and I'd rather not have to do this two or three times because I can't discuss what I need to in one go. I agree with what some other patients have said, the pharmacy is still a complete nightmare. Long queues with some elderly people having to stand for long periods of time; prescriptions not fulfilled despite being put in with plenty of time; items lost... If I could have my prescriptions sent elsewhere (such as Sainsbury's) to be fulfilled, I would!

it seems almost impossible to get an appointment after 8am, i have a couple of times tried to get appointments at 8.30 and also 9.15 and they had all gone! i have also tried ringing at 8am but the phone was constantly engaged,by the time i did finally get through ...all the appointments had gone!!! There is either not enough doctors or too many patients, I expect to be able to ring my doctors at 9.30 and have an appointment for that day or to be able to make an appointment for the following day instead of having to once again wait till the morning and pray you are the first to ring!!!!

While I appreciate no system is perfect I do feel that to see a doctor for a non urgent appointment has in the past been problematic and time consuming. Its a pity that this cannot be done via the website, in fact the website is very limiting in what you can actually do. Also while I know reception staff are trying to weed out unnecessary visits I really don't want to explain to them why I want to see a doctor and especially not vocalise this in the waiting room. Regarding the pharmacy, how long do we have to queue??? I thought the new robot was meant to speed things up, clearly its not. It was a poor experience before the new Robbie (you need to be a certain age for that one) and its worse now !!