A doctor will visit at home when necessary, but only if you are housebound or extremely unwell. Home visits, where possible, should be requested before 10.00am. The receptionist will take details of your name, address, telephone number, age and some brief details of what is wrong. This allows the doctor to see the most urgent cases first and plan their rounds.
Please remember that a doctor can see several patients in surgery in the time it takes for one house call. Patients can also be examined more thoroughly and further investigations carried out if necessary in a surgery environment. Being unable to get to the surgery does not justify a home visit. It is your own responsibility to arrange transport through friends, neighbours or a taxi. Requests after 1.30pm will be dealt with by the duty doctor.
Common symptoms of childhood: fevers, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea/vomiting and most cases of abdominal pain. These patients are usually well enough to travel by car and it is not necessarily harmful to take a child with fever outside.
Adults with common problems, such as cough, sore throat, influenza, back pain and abdominal pain are also readily transported by car to a doctors’s premises.
Common problems in the elderly, such as poor mobility, joint pain and general malaise would also best be treated in a surgery setting. The exception to this would be the truly bed-bound patient.
