It’s the Daily Echo campaign that could help save thousands of valuable NHS hours.

Turn Up or Tell ‘Em aims to stop people making doctor’s appointments and not turning up.

More than 6,000 GP appointments a month are missed in Southampton, meaning that people who really do need them are missing out.

Practise Manager of Mulberry House Surgery Emma Wiltshire said: “It is really frustrating.

“You’ll be surprised at how many people phone up saying I desperately need to see the GP today and then they won’t turn up, so you’ve had to give that urgent appointment because they were adamant they were poorly - then they don’t turn up.”

The surgery serves patients in the Highfield area of Southampton, and has a sister surgery in St Denys.

Over December 2015, in total 154 booked appointments were missed at the two surgeries, wasting 2205 GP minutes. Of that total 42 were GP appointments and 112 were appointments to see the nurse.

On an average day GPs at the practices will have 60 available appointments and 48 nurse appointments.

Ms Wiltshire said: “December is a particularly busy time with flu and pneumonia vaccines, and annual health checks for asthma and diabetes patients, which can be exacerbated during the winter months. So the number of missed appointments is ridiculous, especially when the surgeries are under winter pressures anyway.”

Ms Wiltshire, from Totton, has been at the practice for nearly three years, and said: “We’ve noticed it more with the recent recruitment crisis. GPs are leaving left right and centre, so appointments are tight anyway. It doesn’t take much to pick up the phone but it’s really beyond me why people don’t bother – I just don’t know. We do have a couple of elderly patients who have dementia so we phone them an hour beforehand to remind them.

“But we also have a system called online access where patients can book, cancel or order repeat prescriptions and you can have the app on your phone so it’s easy to log in, find your appointment and then cancel it.”

Marlene Rice, the receptionist at Mulberry House, said: “We do send reminders but it’s generally the same people, so how we overcome that problem is the difficulty. If you know they have missed appointments in the past you can say ‘are you going to come?’ – sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.”