New Out-of-hours care in Wiltshire coming 1st april
Wiltshire NHS have asked for us to make you aware of some changes coming to the out of hours service in this area,
From 1st April 2010 Wiltshire NHS is changing its Out of Hours Service for medical and dental treatment across the whole of Wiltshire.
Choose well to get the right treatment
You’ve shut your finger in a door and think it might be broken. You’ve got a really bad cold and it might even be flu. It’s ten o’clock at night and your three-year-old is screaming with earache. Your elderly mother has fallen downstairs and lost consciousness. Do you call A&E, an out-of-hours GP, go to a Minor Injury Unit (MIU) or wait until it goes away?
Each of these common medical situations has a different solution. In the first instance, you should go to an MIU. In the second, take a paracetamol and curl up somewhere warm with lots of tissues. The three-year-old needs a call to the out-of-hours service and a fall leading to a loss of consciousness means call 999 at once.
Making the right choice is important for you, so NHS Wiltshire has produced Choose Well – a webpage and leaflet that act as a simple, handy guide to getting the right treatment.
The webpage – www.wiltshirepct.nhs.uk/choosewell, goes live on April 1, along with a new Wiltshire-wide service for out-of-hours medical and dental services, provided by a local company, Wiltshire Medical Services. Click on the website, or pick up a leaflet at your doctor’s surgery, library or other public building, to find out who to call when.
In an emergency (eg serious injury, loss of consciousness, chest pain or suspected stroke), patients should always phone 999. For healthcare advice over the phone, NHS Direct is available on 0845 4647.