The NHS is here for you, so don’t delay if you need us, but please help us help you, by choosing the right service during this busy cold weather period (January 2026).
You can help us, help you by:
- Using NHS 111 online, or via phone, if you’re unsure what to do or where to go. Where needed, they can arrange for a clinician to call you back and provide you with clinical advice. Did you know? You can also call NHS 111 or click on 111.nhs.uk if you need urgent dental care
- Your local community pharmacy can help with over 40 common conditions and can now provide prescriptions under Pharmacy First for seven conditions including UTIs and eye and ear infections
- Our GP practices are incredibly busy. You can book a telephone, online or face to face appointment. Thousands of GP appointments are missed in Somerset every year. Please help our GPs by cancelling appointments if you are unable to attend, so they can be offered to other patients. Please use the NHS app to order a repeat prescription.
- In the winter more people have trips and falls – remember your local Urgent Treatment Centre’s are open seven days a week and often have much shorter waiting times than at A&E. They can help with a range of urgent care including broken bones, cuts and wounds, chest infections, throat infections and minor head injuries
- People can struggle more with their mental health over winter. Our Open Mental Health service offers a 24/7 phone line, an online help service during the day and drop in crisis centres across Somerset. For more information visit Somerset Open Mental Health
- Only call 999 for an ambulance when someone is seriously injured or ill and their life may be at risk; for example, if they are unconscious, not breathing or bleeding heavily. If an ambulance has been arranged for you, only call back if the patient’s condition worsens, or you wish to cancel the ambulance
- Accident and Emergency – please only visit if you are seriously ill or injured. Please consider whether you can use an urgent treatment centre instead, if, for example, you have had a fall or broken a bone.
- Hospitals Please don’t visit someone in hospital if you have a respiratory infection – cough or cold – or have experienced vomiting or diarrhoea within the past 48 hours. Patients in our hospitals are vulnerable and could become even more ill if infections are passed onto them.
Please Be Patient Be Kind
We will do our best to see you as quickly as possible, but you may need to wait longer than usual to be seen when you walk in for care, or we may not always be able to offer you a same-day GP appointment.
Our staff are working incredibly hard in very challenging circumstances. Violence and abuse does have an awful impact on our staff’s health and wellbeing.
