"Gall bladder surgery - great care - dodgy..."

I spent a week at St Richards after being admitted with abdominal pain. I would have three complaints about my experiences last week. Firstly I was disappointed with the co-ordination between different parts of the hospital, for example my surgery on Monday was postponed due to the surgeon seeing my blood results from the previous Wednesday - I think they should have been looked at before this! The consultant I saw on the ward did not listen to me at all coming up with an inaccurate diagnosis which was based on an extremely brief and cursory examination; only when the pharmacist discovered me in tears did I actually see doctors who listened to me and examined me properly. Thirdly, the heating in Middleton Ward was still on during a very hot week in June, most of the patients on the ward had problems sleeping due to the heat and we had windows open overnight - if this was hospital-wide this is a massive waste of energy and money not to mention detrimental to the health of patients in your care. Although this sounds very negative, I was actually impressed with most of the care I received, with the exception of the consultant already described, every single member of staff of the ward was fantastic, the care given was thorough and every patient in my bay was treated with dignity and respect, the cleanliness and hygiene of the ward was fantastic and the ward staff were very good at listening to concerns and explaining their actions. They were also very good at keeping me aware of what was going on as they found out themselves, I did sometimes find that they weren't kept informed, and there was sometimes confusion over what was going on, e.g. an anaesthetist coming to prepare me for sugery when I was actually having a scan, being starved on two days when actually no investigations were carried out. When I actually had surgery, the surgical team were great at informing me of what was going to happen and my recovery back on the ward was helped by the nursing staff helping deal with pain relief drug side-effects. I want to say a massive thank-you to all of the nursing and care staff on Middleton Ward they were absolutely fantastic and worked very well as a team, I can't thank them enough for making my hospital visit as pleasant as it could be under the circumstances.