If you feel that a house call is an appropriate use of our time you should contact the surgery by telephone before 10:00am. The doctor may well call you back to discuss the request. This is so that the doctor can plan and prioritise his calls. It is helpful if you can give the receptionist as much detail as possible when requesting a house call.

Please make every effort to come to the surgery unless you are truly too ill to get out of bed or house bound. The surgery because it is better equipped to deal with your illness and many more patients can be seen at the surgery in the time that it takes to make a house call.

The following visiting guidelines and examples are approved by many local medical committees around the country.

A GP visit is appropriate for a terminally ill patient, nursing home resident or a permanently housebound elderly patient, for whom travel to the health centre by car would cause a deterioration in their medical condition or unacceptable discomfort.

A GP visit may be useful

• After initial assessment by telephone a patient may be helped by a GPs attendance prior to an emergency hospital admission. Examples of such situations include shortness of breath and severe abdominal pain.
• In an urban area where hospital facilities are nearby it may be more appropriate to be taken by ambulance directly to hospital.

A GP visit is not useful - In most of these cases, to visit would not be an appropriate use of a GPs time:

• Common symptoms of childhood- fevers, cold, cough, earache, headache, diarrhoea/vomiting and most cases of abdominal pain. These children are usually well enough to travel by car and it is not harmful to take a child with a fever outside.
• Adults with common problems, such as cough, sore throat, influenza, back pain and abdominal pain, are also readily transportable by car to the health centre.
• Common problems in the elderly, such as poor mobility, joint pain and general malaise, would also best be treated by consultation at a doctor's premises. The exception to this would be the truly bed-bound patient.
• If you are experiencing chest pain do not call the GP, dial 999. The faster you can get to the hospital, the better the outcome is likely to be if this is heart pain.