People are living longer and are developing more complicated illnesses, which is putting pressure on health care services such as your local GP surgery. This increasing number of patients also means it can be hard to get an appointment with your GP as quickly as you would perhaps like.

For some symptoms, patients may be able to self-care or go directly to the service they require, without the need for seeing their GP. But given the volume of services available, how is the patient to know how to access them or indeed which one they need?

Signposting Health has been developed specifically to address this. It began as a projet to specially train GP Surgery reception and clerical teams, so that they can become ‘signposters’. As a ‘signposter’, they are trained to ask you, the patient, about your condition. Please do not be offended if your GP receptionist asks you for details about your problem – they have been trained to be active signposters who can let you know about services which may be able to help you. This way you won’t have to wait for a GP appointment, and you can get the best help, first time.