Patients who are referred for tests will be told by the clinician when to contact the surgery for a result. It is the patient’s responsibility to do this in order to avoid any delay in starting treatment or taking further action. Please allow 5 working days following your test to allow for results to be processed onto our clinical sytems and for them to be reviewed by a clinician.

Patients should enquire online below, telephone or call in at the surgery after 11:00am for test results. The reason for this is that staff are very busy with making appointments, and requests for home visits for the first part of every morning, and the viewing of test results requires using a different part of the computer system. We will only give results to the person who has had the test for confidentiality reasons.

Doctors will look at test results and indicate if they are within the normal range for that patient. In these cases, staff will be authorised to tell patients that ‘doctor has seen your results and made no comment’.

If the result is outside normal range, the doctor will mark the result ‘speak to doctor’, and the receptionist will arrange for you to speak to the doctor about the result. Receptionists are not qualified to give any interpretation of results, and in some cases may arrange for a nurse to speak to a patient, for instance to explain a cholesterol test result.

The doctor may mark the results ‘GP routine appointment’ in which case the receptionist will help you make an appointment.

In case you do not telephone the practice for your test results, we may sometimes send you a letter, asking you to make an appointment with your GP to discuss the test results.

A blood test is when a sample of blood is taken for testing in a laboratory. Blood tests have a wide range of uses and are one of the most common types of medical test. For example, a blood test can be used to:

• assess your general state of health
• confirm the presence of a bacterial or viral infection
• see how well certain organs, such as the liver and kidneys, are functioning

A blood test usually involves the phlebotomist taking a blood sample from a blood vessel in your arm and the usual place for a sample is the inside of the elbow or wrist, where the veins are relatively close to the surface. Blood samples from children are most commonly taken from the back of the hand. The childs hand will be anaesthetised (numbed) with a special cream before the sample is taken.

You can find out more about blood tests, their purpose and the way they are performed on the NHS Choices website.

An X-ray is a widely used diagnostic test to examine the inside of the body. X-rays are a very effective way of detecting problems with bones, such as fractures. They can also often identify problems with soft tissue, such as pneumonia or breast cancer.

If you have an X-ray, you will be asked to lie on a table or stand against a surface so that the part of your body being X-rayed is between the X-ray tube and the photographic plate.

An X-ray is usually carried out by a radiographer, a healthcare professional who specialises in using imaging technology, such as X-rays and ultrasound scanners.

You can find out more about x-ray tests, how they are performed, their function and the risks by visiting the NHS Choices website.