"Poor surgical wards"

I was shuffled between wards 63-65 in Sept and again in October 2015.

Fantastic Doctors and Junior Doctors! Only too happy to help patients and put them out of pain... the trouble was some of the nurses reluctance to actually tell them patients were in agony. On numerous occasions I heard nurses tell patients they were not allowed any more pain relief. Patients in the wards I was in (and sometimes concerned relatives) would query this and the nurses were in my opinion, at best rude and evasive.

There were patients (including myself with a life threatening condition) rocking on their beds, on the floors, wailing in pain and several of the nurses seemed unwilling to call a Doctor to write them up for more pain relief. I don't think this is the nurses call!

I was put in and left in a toilet cubicle so I didn't distress the visitors with my pain. Another patient later found me passed out from the pain on the toilet floor (disgusting) and alerted another nurse from another ward. Only at this point a Doctor was called - they were only too happy to help and gave me morphine.

This was not an isolated incident! When the Doctors arrived they shyly apologised for leaving us in that pain for that length of time but there was nothing they could do. The Doctors told me they don't manage the nurses.

Many of the nurses were lovely but there were numerous dismissive nurses making decisions that I think they were simply not qualified to make.

The Enhanced Recovery Ward was good.

The other issue is the "hand over" meetings. The nurses in these wards are not to be disturbed during these meetings. Your agony just has to wait. Auxiliary nurses took it upon themselves to tell you you'd need to wait until the handover was finished to get a nurse to ask for morphine. They couldn't even pass the message on for you! This was something again, doctors apologised for in private.

You wouldn't leave someone in the pain they left me and many others in (sometimes for hours). I just don't understand it.

Apparently the bedding is only changed in ward 64 if the bedding looks grubby. Other than that its changed on a Sunday and/or Wednesday.

This needs to stop. As a normally perfectly able bodied young person I've never felt so humiliated and unsafe in all my life.