"I found the telephone pre-op assessment frustrating"

I had my wisdom tooth removed today.  I gave my positive feedback via the online system they provided shortly after my surgery.  However, it would not accept my constructive feedback and I would like to give a more holistic summary.

I found the telephone pre-op assessment frustrating.  I was originally issued with an appointment time for my pre-op assessment which I could not make.  I phoned to advise of this and a new appointment time was arranged.  However I received a letter providing a different time again, but that time was convenient to me.  Nevertheless the day of the telephone appointment, I received two calls, four hours before the appointment and one hour after - none of which I could answer cause I was working.  I phoned back the following day to reschedule and a new appointment time was made.  On the day of the revised appointment I was phoned an hour earlier than scheduled, but luckily it as during my lunch break so I was available.

The telephone assessment felt unnecessarily inefficient.  The individual repeatedly asked me to repeat myself (not my usual experience of being on the phone) and she eventually stated she was experiencing hearing problems on the day, which, while I empathise, led me to wonder why she was making telephone assessments on a day that she couldn't hear. 

I found many of the questions unnecessarily intrusive when I was undergoing a simple dental procedure, such as asking after my psychiatric history.  When asked, she provided a reasonable justification as to why a particular answer might be relevant, i.e. if you suffer with anxiety, it might be helpful for us to be aware of, but surely if that is the information that's required, I believe it would be better to ask more closed relevant questions related to presentations the clinicians might want to look out for.  Indeed, the level of unnecessary intrusion was confirmed for me when I attended my appointment and no questions, other than, how are you feeling about your procedure? were mentioned about my psychiatric history.

Most frustrating however was the difficulty I experienced in trying to determine what time I should be potentially collected.  This conversation went round in many many circles.  While I can appreciate it is impossible to know for certain, it took an unreasonable amount of time just to get an idea of the best and worst case scenario.  As someone who ordinarily lives by themselves and having to organise other people to come and collect me, this made my life particularly difficult.  Especially because when I attended for my procedure, I was instantly informed the time I could expect to be collected, which was two 1/2 hours earlier than the estimate of the best case scenario provided by the pre-op assessment; this led me to wait in the discharge lounge for those two 1/2 hours while I waited for my responsible adult to collect me.  Furthermore, the question I had, regarding the times I could eat were not answered.  While I'd received paperwork to provide guidance, the time of my appointment was not covered in the literature, and when I asked the the pre-op assessor, she could not answer, and therefore I ultimately made an educated guess airing on the side of caution (which was ultimately fine).

As previously stated, my positive experience is detailed via the platform I was asked to give feedback this afternoon.  In summary, my experience of my surgery was exceptionally good and the staff were really warm, supportive, patient, responsive, knowledgeable and able to answer all of my questions.  However my sense is that the pre-op assessment is not as well managed, and conducted by people who are seemingly not educated in the specific field of medicine they may be asked to assess people for, and I feel, at least in my situation, that led to poor/no relevant advice that would have been very helpful to me.