"Good care at Luton & Dunstable Hospital (apart from phones)"

I have just been discharged from Luton & Dunstable Hospital after surgery, and would like to say that on the whole, my experience was very good.

I would like to thank my surgeon, Mr. Jambulingam, along with the Consultant Anaesthetist Dr. Harrison, and all of their teams, plus nursing staff in HDU and Ward 22, for the care I received, particularly after I suffered an adverse reaction to morphine.

A criticism I would like to make -

The first regarding the telephone set-up in the wards for relatives to call in and find out how a patient is.

I was in HDU for the first day, where they had no issue with my relative calling to find out how I was, but when I was moved to Ward 22, I was 'told off' in no uncertain terms twice by a very surly staff member who stormed to my bed twice and told me that two people had called to ask how I was, that she wasn't at all happy that people had rung the ward, and that I would not be able to speak to them. (I subsequently spoke to both of them on my own phone a day or two later and they both said they had been spoken to rudely by the short-tempered person at the end of the phone.)

At this point, I was just out of HDU, still very groggy from the morphine problem, too ill to stand or walk, and had not been given any information that there was a credit card television system at each bed (L&D hospital literature recommends you DON'T bring credit cards into hospital, which I didn't, so not sure how that would be viable!), and ONLY if you subscribed to that by credit card, or by buying a special card somewhere in the hospital (I couldn't stand, let alone go wandering in search of a machine) could anyone actually make an inbound telephone call to the bed.

Being reprimanded in this manner by an irritable staff member for something beyond your control, whilst in a state of severe pain and confusion, is totally unacceptable and was very upsetting.