Practice Area
All patients living in our catchment area are able to register with us at anytime. You may also be able to register with us if you do not live within our practice area.
Please enter your postcode below to check if you live within our catchment area.
Catchment Area
Registering with a GP surgery outside your local area can affect the NHS services that you can access including:
- Home visits and urgent care from your GP, including out of hours care
- Community services, such as physiotherapy and midwife appointments
How to Register With us
Alternatively
You can pick up a registration form at our sites at Stanhope, Wolsingham or St John’s Chapel.
When Registering:
- Return the completed form to the practice
Registering Children
Children under 16 need to be registered by their parent or guardian. This usually means filling in a separate form. You may also be asked to provide a form of ID to prove that you’re their parent or guardian.
If you have a personal child health record (red book) from the birth of your child, it will help to provide this.
Registering for someone you care for under the Mental Capacity Act
If someone over 16 is unable to register because they cannot make decisions about their care, registration can be done by:
- A relative
- The main carer
- A lasting power of attorney
- A person appointed by a court under the Mental Capacity Act
We serve around 7,200 patients all across Weardale. Our main surgery is in Stanhope – with branch surgeries in Wolsingham and St John’s Chapel.
Acceptable Behaviour Agreement
We now ask all new patients to sign an agreement which is then filed on your medical record.
We are committed to ensuring everyone is treated with respect and dignity including all patients, their families, carers and our practice team.
In order to continue to be registered with our practice we are providing this guide to set out the type of conduct that is expected of all patients.
All patients are expected to behave in the following manner:
- To be polite and respectful towards all individuals (staff and other patients) in person, on the phone, in writing, and on social media.
- To not make inappropriate or unacceptable remarks to any member of staff or other patients at the practice including any abusive remarks related to any individuals:
- age
- disability
- gender reassignment
- marriage or civil partnership
- pregnancy
- race
- religion or belief
- sex
- sexual orientation
- To not undertake any form of threatening abuse or violence towards any individual (staff and other patients) at the practice.
- To use our services responsibly including:
- To request routine appointments in accordance with practice policy
- To request urgent appointments only for genuine urgent conditions
- To engage with any remote appointments we may offer over the telephone (or video)
- To attend face-to-face services where it is important to be seen in person, (including when physically able to do so, rather than requesting a home visit)
- Attend all appointments on time
- Cancel any booked appointments that are no longer required
- Request repeat prescriptions in good time (allowing 3 working days until ready to collect), ensuring that all items are ordered together rather than in individual lots
- Use our health care professionals time in an appropriate manner.
For example:- do not seek appointments for minor ailments that can be self-treated in the first instance
- recognise that the time allocated to an appointment or visit is limited and it may not be possible to deal with all the issues that you would like to raise at a single appointment or visit
- it may not be possible for health care professionals at the practice to meet all your needs in the manner that you would prefer
- To raise only genuine concerns or complaints you may have about your care or the services we provide you
- To not make unnecessarily persistent or unrealistic service demands that cause disruption (to the practice, our staff, or other patients).
- To respect surgery premises and property
- To not take any photos of videos in the practice
- To not park in the ambulance bay
- To attend the surgery premises for the purpose of engaging with our services
In return, as a patient you can expect to:
- continue to access all our services, to be provided with respect, dignity and confidentiality.
- to raise any concerns or complaints about your care or our services and that these will be investigated and responded to.
If any member of staff feels that your behaviour is not consistent with this guidance they will inform you if they feel safe to.
If the behaviour continues then staff will disengage from the conversation. This might involve hanging up the telephone or similar and refusing to answer further calls or questions.
The practice will not re-engage for at least one-hour. If you feel that you have a medical emergency during this time then please call 999.
All patients are free to register with a practice of their choice, as long as the practice has an open patient list for new registrations and the patient lives within the practice area.
All incidents will be reported to the practice management team.
Any patients who commits any inappropriate or unacceptable behaviours towards any member of the practice staff, other patients or the surgery premises or property, risk being removed from the practice list with eight-days’ notice. We will normally provide a warning letter which will be held on record for 12 months before issuing such a notice.
Any threatening abuse or violent incidents will not be tolerated. Any such incident will be reported to the police and will mean your immediate removal from the practice list and your care transferred to a special allocation scheme which manages violent and aggressive patients.
We invite patients to agree to the terms of this guide as a commitment to our ongoing relationship.
