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 or via the online registration process.

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

All surgeries are accessible to disabled visitors; however, if you require help entering the surgery, please contact the receptionist who will be pleased to assist.