A DOCTOR's surgery has revealed the number of appointments wasted by people who failed to turn up to them.
Market Street Medical Practice in Dalton said during the month of May, 68 appointments were not attended including 20 routine face-to-face GP appointments, three same-day face-to-face GP appointments, four 24-hour face-to-face GP appointments and 10 blood sampling appointments.
Over four hours of nurse clinical time was lost due to patients not attending pre-booked asthma reviews or smears.
During the month of May, 2,658 appointments were attended across their teams of GPs, nurses, health care assistants, pharmacists, physiotherapists and mental health practitioners.
READ MORE: Dalton's surgery sees dozens medical appointments not attended
A spokesperson for Market Street Medical Practice said: "We appreciate the phone lines can be very busy especially first thing and suggest trying after 4pm if you know you have an upcoming appointment that you can no longer attend.
"You can also cancel appointments by simply replying “cancel” to your reminder text or pop in and see us.
"While it is frustrating for both our team and patients that so much appointment time is lost, while others have been unable to book, the purpose of these posts are to highlight how busy our team are and how valuable the appointment slots are.
"We do appreciate that due to circumstances beyond control the numbers will never be perfect and sometimes even clinicians get sick and appointments need to be rearranged at short notice but please do try to help us offer these appointments to other patients if you can no longer attend."
The month of May has seen a decrease from the 71 appointments not attended in April at the practice.
It included 15 routine face-to-face GP appointments, three 24-hour GP appointments and 9 same-day urgent GP appointments.
Ten blood sampling appointments were also not attended meaning other patients may have had to travel to Furness General Hospital as their blood appointments are 'often at capacity'.
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