You will need to come into the Practice to fill in some forms.

Eligibility can be quickly confirmed from your address, so please provide proof of your name and address by way of a utility bill and ideally one form of photo ID, such as a passport or photo driving licence.

New Patients are invited to attend a new patient medical.

Once we take you onto our list, we fully expect you to help us with the preventative aspect of our work such as immunisations, cervical smears etc.  We need your full co-operation for a relationship between the primary care team and yourselves to be successful.  Help us to help you.

If you are ill while away from home or if you are not registered with a doctor but need to see one you can receive emergency treatment from the local GP practice for 14 days. After 14 days you will need to register as a temporary or permanent patient.

You can be registered as a temporary patient for up to three months. This will allow you to be on the local practice list and still remain a patient of your permanent GP. After three months you will have to re-register as a temporary patient or permanently register with that practice.

To register as a temporary patient simply contact the local practice you wish to use. Practices do not have to accept you as a temporary patient although they do have an obligation to offer emergency treatment. You cannot register as a temporary patient at a practice in the town or area where you are already registered.

These fact sheets have been written to explain the role of UK health services, the National Health Service (NHS), to newly-arrived individuals seeking asylum. They cover issues such as the role of GPs, their function as gatekeepers to the health services, how to register and how to access emergency services.

Special care has been taken to ensure that information is given in clear language, and the content and style has been tested with user groups.

Open the leaflets in one of the following languages:

English	Farsi	Urdu
Albanian	Bengali	Hindi
Arabic	Croatian	Lithuanian
Bulgarian	Punjabi	Polish
Chinese (Cantonese)	Somali	Portuguese
Chinese (Mandarin)	Gujerati	Spanish
Russian	Turkish	French

At Lawson Street Health Centre reserved car spaces for the disabled are marked near the front door.  Patient services are provided at ground floor level.  A disabled patients’ WC is provided near the front entrance.  If access proves difficult to any of our disabled patients we would be happy to consider any suggestions for improvement.

There are lifts available.

Patients should expect to be treated with respect and courtesy and not to be discriminated against on the grounds of sex, race, colour or creed. 

Your responsibilities to us are: 

• To afford the same level of courtesy and respect to all members of the practice
• To recognise that verbal or physical abuse will not be tolerated.

For new/nursing mothers, there are baby changing and breast feeding facilities available on the ground floor.  The key to these facilities is available from the main reception (opposite the main health centre entrance).  Please do not hesitate to ask if you require access to these facilities.