"Pre-op nurses were excellent, ..."

What I liked

Pre-op nurses were excellent, friendly and attentive when I raised concerns.

My surgeon and anaesthetist were fantastic, reassuring and honest.

My recovery nurse was brilliant.

My surgery was earlier than expected

Staff were very quick to react when problems started

What could be improved

I had an.. 'unpleasant' surgery on my penis, and the local anaesthetic they'd given me hadn't worked. I was told this in an honest and blunt manner by my surgeon, which I appreciated. I did not appreciate, however, being told to 'man up' by the nurse as I was in too much pain to get dressed even after a full dose of morphine.

The same nurse then proceeded to change my prescription from 60mg dihydrocodeine 4x a day and a few tubes of lidocaine jelly to 'just paracetamol' because she thought she knew better than my surgeon and anaesthetist. I'm lucky my recovery nurse came off her break a few seconds before I left!

I took a small turn for the worst the day after the surgery and my partner found it impossible to get back in touch with the hospital (during working hours) and ended up calling out an emergency GP. Initially, the phone number we were given for the ward was wrong, and when put through to another ward there was no answer.

Anything else?

Some better communication, some more respectful nurses (I think there may have been a cultural issue here too) would've made this much better. Some acknowledgement from the staff that this was a 'big deal' for me (I was 20) would've been a help too!