Frequently Asked Questions

Presently the practice does not have the staffing resources that it would need to monitor and deal with the emails that would come through a generic email address, while still trying to maintain the high standards we set ourselves to communicate with patients on the phone and coming through the front door.

Inevitably the address would also be used to request clinical advice from our doctors and nurses, which we would be unwilling to give without being able to conduct a proper consultation in person, or over the phone.

There are several ways in which you can communicate information to us electronically, which are listed in our Contact Details page, but if you have a question about the services we provide that isn’t answered in this website, or if you need clinical advice, please call us on 228 6081, or come in to the practice.
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We consider this to be a safety issue. We take the prescribing of any medication seriously, and require any requests for repeat medication to be done in writing. This helps to minimises the potential errors that could occur through miscommunication over the phone.

There are a variety of ways you can request your repeat meds: Using our website form, by ticking the relevent items on your presciption counterfoil, and handing it in, or mailing it to the practice, by filling out a repeat prescription request form available from reception, or by faxing through your request on 229 4330.
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This policy started during the precautionary measures the practice took during the Swine Flu ‘crisis’ to give us greater flexibilty with the appointment schedule, and it was decided to maintain the system in this way as it significantly reduces the pressure on certain GPs who are regularly ‘blocked booked’ weeks in advance. This has helped us with our continuity of care policy, so that those patients who really need to see ‘their GP’ within our 2 week time span can do so without significant disadvantage to others. We also feel that all patients have an improved access to a wide spectrum of appointments from all the GPs, both at short notice, and within a reasonable timescale for those with recurrent needs.

We do acknowledge that under this system there can be shortcomings for those patients who need to book appointments with the nurses for regular treatments, and are unable to book ahead at the time of their consultation. We regret the inconvenience this can cause patients, but on balance we feel this is a small price for the overall improvement that has occurred.

We continue to monitor our appointments system, and if it becomes apparent that an increasing number of patients are having problems with the 2 week schedule, we will review the situation again.
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There are certain issues that we will ask you to see the doctor first, for an initial assessment, before the issue is handed over to the nurses to treat, such as ear irrigations, and wound checks. This is to ensure that there are no underlying issues or problems present that would require further investigation or treatment.
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The Open Surgery is still a booked clinic, requiring you to make an appointment in advance, but instead of the appointment being booked with a specific doctor, the GPs covering the surgery consult with patients on a first come first served basis.

Because these appointments are booked, we still need you to check in at reception (or by using the self-check in touchscreen) when you arrive for your appointment, and to let us know in some way if you can no longer make, or no longer need your appointment.
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This is simply a quirk of our appointments software. Our open surgeries are organised in half hour slots, with the number of patients we see being three times the number of GPs available (as each GP can conduct three 10 minutes consultations within the 30 minute slot – so if we had 6 GPs available, we can see 18 patients in that half hour). To book patients in for these surgeries we give each patient what only looks like a 1 minute slot, meaning the appointment card we print can display some unusual looking times. But because the open surgeries are operated on a first come first served basis, we ask that you arrive at the beginning of the half hour told to you when you make the appointment.
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The orange icon we have at the top the sidebar links to the website rss feed. You can use an rss reader (such as Google Reader, or Bloglines) to subscribe to our feed and keep up-to-date on the news and articles we post to the website without you needing to check back at regular intervals to see if there is anything new to read.

You can read more about rss here: www.whatisrss.com
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The blue ‘t’ icon we have at the top of the sidebar links to the practice twitter account. Twitter is mainly used by individuals as a social networking site, but it can also be used by businesses to keep their clients (or patients in our case) up-to-date on the current goings on.

By design, each twitter post (called tweets) can be no more than 140 characters long, keeping each tweet short and to the point. At Bruntsfield we’re using this as another tool to keep our patients informed of what’s happening in the practice: staffing changes, closures for training or public holidays, changes in medical services offered by the practice or NHS Lothian as a whole, or just simple ‘Did You Know?’ tweets about some feature of the practice that patients might find interesting.

You don’t have to have a twitter account to take advantage of this feature as each twitter account also has its own rss feed, or you can simply check in to our account page every now and then to read any new tweets: twitter.com/bruntsfieldmp

You can read more about twitter here: twitter.com/about
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HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, and its purpose is to create a more secure connection over a network, to allow for the transfer of sensitive information that is protected against eavesdroppers. It is the protocol used by all major websites that take online payments to allow users to enter their credit/debit card information without fear of their details being stolen.

In order to enable this kind of secure connection, it would require us to obtain an SSL certificate from a trusted authority that could be recognised by all major browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari etc) – this would verify our website as trustworthy, and allow for the encryption of data entered through it.

Unfortunately such certificates aren’t free, and in some cases can cost well into the hundreds of pounds, for which we do not have the budget.

We do have a disclaimer displayed below each of the data entry forms on the website declaring that we can’t guarantee the security of any information sent to us through these forms, so if you are concerned about keeping your information secure then you can contact us by mail, phone, fax, or you can come into the practice and speak to someone at the reception desk instead.

We do take the security of all patient data very seriously, and take all reasonable precautions within the practice to make sure your medical information is kept secure and only accessible by authorised individuals, but we also recognise that many patients appreciate the ease of submitting information via the website, which is why we retain that functionality even without HTTPS capability.
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