THE HEALTH BOARD have said they are ‘experiencing difficulties in filling some of our Out-of-Hours rotas in Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire this weekend due to GP shortages.’
They have said that efforts are continuing until the last possible moment, however you may experience a limited service in these counties for which they apologise.
If you are unwell out of hours during the evenings and weekend you can do a number of things:
• for health information and advice, including online symptom checkers, please visit NHS Direct Wales: www.nhsdirect.wales.nhs
• call 111 (Carmarthenshire only) – they can help to signpost you to the right service, for example a GP, nurse, pharmacist or Minor Injury Unit, they also provide health information on a wide range of conditions for self care if appropriate
• use your community pharmacy, some of these have enhanced services like ‘triage and treat’ for treatment of minor conditions
• ONLY in an emergency for serious or life-threatening conditions should you dial 999
Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Operations Joe Teape said: “I would like to apologise for any concern or inconvenience caused due to ongoing staffing issues in the Out of Hours GP service. This is currently a familiar trend among other health boards across the country. We know that all of our staff and GPs are working really hard to provide safe services for our patients and we appreciate this. We are working together across the whole health board area and across different services to provide a safety net for our patients.
“The public’s health is our number one priority and although we sometimes cannot achieve everything that we want to achieve, we are doing our utmost to ensure that we can continue to provide services that are safe and robust for our local communities.”
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