Dorset Emergency Care Service
- GP Out of Hours Service
- Advice over the telephone
- A Visit to a Local Treatment Centre
- Have a Home Visit
GP Out of Hours Service
Since 1st October 2004, an emergency out-of-hours medical service has been available when your local GP surgery is closed.
This service is for urgent medical situations – if you, or a member of your family, become ill and you are concerned. It is not for routine enquiries, such as booking an appointment with your GP, repeat prescriptions, or test results.
If you become unwell and need medical help after your GP surgery has closed you can call the Dorset Emergency Care Service on 0845 600 10 13.
Remember: If it is a medical emergency – if you believe that you, or a member of your family, might die if you don’t get medical help immediately – then you should call 999 and ask for an ambulance.
NOT URGENT: If your medical problem is not urgent, please telephone your own GP surgery when it is next open, or call NHS Direct on 0845 46 47 for advice.
When you ring the Dorset Emergency Care Service, your call will go through to the call centre in St Leonard’s, Dorset. A trained member of staff will answer the phone and take some details from you. They will pass your details straight over to a doctor who will ring you back to ask you more about the problem and, with you, will decide the best option for you.
Advice over the telephone
The best solution to a minor medical problem might be to give you some advice over the telephone. This is generally the quickest and most convenient solution if you are concerned about a medical problem.
A Visit to a Local Treatment Centre
It may be decided that you need to see a healthcare professional and you will be asked to go to your nearest local treatment centre. This is because the centre will have the equipment and facilities you may need. A doctor, nurse or emergency care practitioner will also be on site and will be able to examine you more closely. You will be given the choice of which local treatment centre is best for you to go to.
Have a Home Visit
You could be told that you need a home visit by a doctor, a nurse or an emergency care practitioner. This will depend upon the seriousness of your condition. You will be visited as quickly as possible, but your visit will be placed in order of priority according to the seriousness of other patients needing home visits.
When you call the Dorset Emergency Care Service, if staff at the call centre, or the doctor feels that your medical problem is an emergency, they will call 999 on your behalf and an emergency ambulance will come to you.
The Dorset Emergency Care Service was established as a result of changes to the GP contract. One important aim of the new contract was to ease doctors’ workload, making it easier to recruit more GPs into family practices. Therefore, this new out-of-hours service will be provided by a range of trained healthcare professionals, such as nurses and emergency care practitioners, as well as doctors.
Emergency care practitioners are experienced paramedics who have undertaken additional intensive training to be able to provide a wider range of treatments to patients in their own home, and so help to prevent admission to the A&E department.
The Dorset Emergency Care Service is operated by Dorset Ambulance NHS Trust. Dorset Ambulance NHS Trust has a vast amount of experience in managing emergency medical services and is planning to provide a comprehensive out-of-hours emergency medical service across Dorset which, over time, will offer a great deal more choice to the patient.
If your medical problem is not urgent, please telephone your own GP surgery when it is next open, or call NHS Direct on 0845 46 47 for advice.
NHS Direct can give you general medical information 24 hours a day. Their trained nurses can provide you with expert health advice and reassurance any time of the day or night. They will also be able to advise you on anything from where to find a pharmacist, to where to go for emergency dental treatment or how to get emergency contraception.