Portesham Surgery

We are open as normal except on the bank holidays ie Monday 27th December, Tuesday 28th December and Monday 2nd January when we will be closed.

When we are closed please call 111 for urgent medical advice, or 999 in an emergency situation.  Please also see the link below to our "out of Hours Advice", or for less urgent problems click on the eConsult button to send a query to your GP or to the medical secretaries.

We are pleased to announce Mid Dorset Primary Care Network has reopened the Atrium Health Centre as a COVID Vaccination site. Appointments are now available on the National Booking System which can be accessed by calling 119 or by following this link: 

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavirus-vaccination/book-coronavirus-vaccination/

Please DO NOT phone us to book, as we cannot access the booking system. If you cannot get an appointment, please keep checking the National Booking System as we will be running further clinics in the coming weeks.

Boosters will only be administered to eligible people, meaning you must have had your second dose at least 3 months ago. Only Pfizer/BioNTech vaccinations will be administered.

There is NOT an option to walk-in without a booking, so please do not attempt to do this as you will be turned away.

We will have appointments this weekend and over the Christmas period and these will be staffed, as before, by GPs, nurses and admin staff from our 9 surgeries in Mid Dorset, so we hope to see some of you there.

So far we have only had to cancel a couple of routine appointments in order to free up our staff to work at the clinic, as requested by the Prime Minister and NHS England.  Most of our GP and nurse appointments over the Christmas period are already reserved for urgent or emergency problems which should mean there is not too much disruption to pre-booked appointments.  However this does mean that if need a routine appointment we are now looking at mid-January.  We hope you will understand that we are doing our best to offer both urgent and routine services as well as support the vaccination clinics at this very busy time of year.

Medical settings are a higher risk environment and will need to be subject to more control measures than other public facilities. We are acting very cautiously and are maintaining:

• Face coverings
• Social distancing
• PPE for healthcare staff

The Delta variant is more transmissible (and for those doubly vaccinated symptoms are closer to the common cold) so patients may come to the surgery when they are contagious without realising. It is our duty  to do all we can to keep both our patients and staff safe whilst we deliver our care.  We are also struggling with staff absences due to COVID and therefore it is in everyone's best interests to pop a face mask on in order to be sure we can keep our service running.

We are seeing an increasing number of patients coming in without masks saying they are exempt, especially when collecting medication.  In this situation we will offer you a face-visor to wear or ask you to collect your medication from the outside, through the dispensary window.

Thank you for your understanding and co-operation.

Portesham Surgery