ON-CALL family doctors in Burnley are starting morning surgery exhausted after being kept awake at night by 'emergencies' such as itchy bottoms, sore throats and earache.

They are fed up with being called out to deal with relatively minor ailments in the middle of the night - when they could wait until surgeries open the next day.

But now GPs are making sweeping changes to the way they cope with their gruelling night-time and weekend rounds.

From Saturday (June 1), 35 doctors are banding together to provide an out-of-hours emergency service based at one surgery at the general hospital.

Patients who phone their regular practice will have their call re-routed to the Burnley and Pendle primary care centre, which will cover Nelson and Colne as well as Burnley and Padiham.

Dr James Robertson, who announced the change, said: "We feel this is way to provide the best possible care for people in Burnley and Pendle. It is the first service of its kind in Burnley and will be flexible and staffed by local doctors."

He said it was very common for GPs to be called out at night for problems which turned out to be trivial, the most memorable of which was an itchy bottom. "If you have been up all night, you are not going to be at your sparkling best in the morning," he said.

"There are times when people can become anxious about things which we would not normally get anxious about, and that is entirely understandable. Under this system, if you have got somebody who is ill but not desperately ill, they can still be treated with the minimum of fuss."

Leaflets and posters are being sent to surgeries to tell patients about the change. The centre, next to the accident and emergency department, is open every night, Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday. After midnight, calls will be diverted to the radio doctor service.

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