"Success at the Conquest, and Richard Ticehurst..."

Dear Conquest Hospital,

I've got a couple of your feedback forms, one from the pre-assessment in the surgical unit, one from De Cham ward, but I feel I ought to send you an unqualified positive feedback for all the services you provided me, not only visible front-line services but a whole host of other things, so here goes:

Everything, from the initial calls to your reception and appointments team to my discharge went perfectly.

It is so easy to thoughtlessly rank "NHS" as some kind of tired, failing and dinosaurian monolith, which the press are so quick and careless to do, but the evidence belies this.

The Conquest Hospital is like a little city where everyone knows their mission and works together, capably and, apparently, tirelessly.

It took less than a week to process me through the system from start to finish. How you managed to coordinate activities to ensure that so many people were treated on the day I was there, and every day - with notes, blood test results, equipment and all the staff on hand - was amazing.

Everyone that I encountered was friendly, patient, knowledgeable, helpful, efficient, skillful and decisive, even to the extent of immediately personalising my anaesthesia according to my stated wishes and needs and making me comfortable before and after my operation - in fact totally loving and caring.

The value and proof of all this is that I have had no post-operative tiredness, pain, infection or mobility problems.

I haven't mentioned anyone by name. They know who they are and I remember, too, but it is obvious that my helpers were typical of the whole and that somewhere behind the scenes is also a wonderful management team. Thank you all.