Sloane Medical Practice is Now Available 24/7

At Sloane Medical Practice your family doctors, with access to care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

We are delighted to announce an important extension to our service:

Sloane Medical Practice patients can now access GP care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Your healthcare shouldn’t have to wait until morning

For many years, our patients have valued the personal care and continuity provided by our doctors. We know, however, that illness and medical concerns do not always conveniently occur during practice hours.

Whether a child develops a high temperature late at night, you become unwell over the weekend, or you simply need medical advice when the practice is closed, we want you to know that help is available.

Your usual doctors, with additional support around the clock

During our normal opening hours, you will continue to receive exactly the same service from your usual Sloane Medical Practice doctors and team.

Outside these hours, 24/7 medical care will be provided by our trusted partners by home visit or video call.

This means that while the doctor you speak to out of hours will not usually be one of our regular Sloane Medical Practice GPs, the service forms part of the extended care we are making available to our patients. They will report back to your usual doctor who will continue your care.

Sloane Medical Practice have vetted and reviewed the doctors who work with our trusted partners and they are highly experienced GPs in acute care and emergency medicine. If you are interested in seeing the doctors profile, we would be happy to share these with you on request by email.

We believe it is important to be transparent about this distinction while also giving our patients the reassurance of knowing that they have somewhere to turn when the practice is closed.

When might I use the out-of-hours service?

You might wish to access the service if you or a family member becomes unwell outside our usual opening hours and you feel that the problem cannot comfortably wait until the practice reopens.

This could include:

A child becoming unwell during the night
A sudden infection or fever
A troublesome rash or allergic reaction
Vomiting or diarrhoea
An unexpected health concern while away from home
Medical advice when you are unsure whether something needs more urgent attention

For routine appointments, ongoing medical problems and matters where continuity of care is particularly important, we would still encourage you to see one of your regular Sloane Medical Practice doctors whenever possible.

Continuity of care remains at the heart of our practice

Becoming a 24/7 practice does not change what we value most.

We remain a small, personal family practice where our doctors get to know their patients often looking after several generations of the same family.

The new service is designed to complement that relationship, not replace it.

During practice hours, our own GPs remain your first point of contact. The difference is that when our doors are closed, you now have access to additional clinical support rather than having to wait until the following morning.

What about an emergency?

Our 24/7 service is not a replacement for the emergency services.

If you believe you or someone else is experiencing a life-threatening medical emergency, call 999 or attend an Emergency Department immediately.

Symptoms such as severe chest pain, severe difficulty breathing, signs of a stroke, loss of consciousness or a severe allergic reaction require emergency assessment.

Here for you day and night

We hope our new 24/7 service provides an additional layer of reassurance for our patients and their families.

It means that the personal care you know from Sloane Medical Practice during the day is now supported by access to medical advice and care when the practice is closed.

How to access our 24/7 service

During normal and outside practice hours:

Contact Sloane Medical Practice in the usual way to arrange an appointment with our team on 0207 235 3002.

If you are unsure which service you need, please contact the practice and our team will be happy to explain how our new 24/7 service works.

Lung Cancer Screening:

Why Earlier Really Is Better

The 1st of August was World Lung Cancer Day, so it seems like a good opportunity to talk about something increasingly important in disease prevention: screening for lung cancer before it causes symptoms.

We are all familiar with screening for cancers such as breast, bowel and cervical cancer (mammogram, stool samples; PAP smear test respectively). Lung cancer has historically been rather different. As there is often no reliable early warning signs, by the time symptoms such as a persistent cough, hoarseness, coughing up blood or unexplained weight loss appears, the disease may already be more advanced.

That is why we are routinely referring for a low-dose CT (LDCT) scan to screen our patients at higher risk. Higher risk is for those aged 50-80 years who either currently smoke or stopped smoking within the last 15 years.

Importantly, this is not a normal chest X-ray. A low-dose CT scan provides much more detailed images of the lungs while using considerably less radiation than a standard CT scanner. CT scans are not loud like MRI scans, and only take about 3 minutes in a smaller scanner.

Large clinical trials have shown that screening with low-dose CT can reduce deaths from lung cancer by finding cancers earlier, when there is a much better chance of successful treatment. For example, a very small lung cancer discovered on a CT scan may be confined to a small area and potentially curable with surgery and/or targeted radiotherapy. The same cancer discovered much later, after it has spread elsewhere in the body, may no longer be curable.

What are the downsides?

A low-dose CT does involve radiation, although as the name suggests the dose is deliberately kept low. The radiation exposure from a single scan is small, but it is not zero. For people at sufficiently high risk of lung cancer, the potential benefit of finding a cancer early is considered to outweigh this small radiation risk.
Screening is not perfect. CT scans are extremely sensitive and can often identify small, harmless lung nodules. Most are benign and will never cause a problem, but they may need repeat scans to ensure they are not growing. Occasionally, an uncertain finding leads to further investigations, such as additional imaging, PET scanning, bronchoscopy or biopsy, which can cause understandable anxiety, but again, better to be safe than sorry where you health is concerned!

If you still smoke, there is absolutely no judgement attached. But of course stopping smoking remains the single most effective thing you can do to reduce your future lung cancer risk and it is worthwhile quitting at any age.

When it comes to lung cancer, forewarned really can be forearmed. Finding something before it makes itself known can sometimes make the difference between treating a cancer and curing it.

Thank You

We’re grateful for our amazing patients! Thanks to your support, this year at Sloane Medical Practice will be filled with new services, improved experiences, and care designed just for you 😊

We look forward to supporting your health throughout 2026.

Warm Regards,

Sloane Medical Practice