"You Did a Great Job!"

I had my gallbladder out in January as urgent surgery via the ESTU, after which I moved to the gastric ward for the rest of my stay.

It was my first ever surgery and my experience was very reassuring.

The surgical team were friendly, informative, and very importantly not condescending - they discussed every aspect of what would happen and any possible issues that could arise.

My operation went perfectly and I had no post operative complications - a completely different story to two of the other women on the ward, who had been brought in from other hospitals after their surgeries had gone very wrong.

It's a credit to the MRI surgical team that not one of the women who had been originally operated on there had complications.

I've mentioned this to a few people since then, as a lot of people seem to have a negetive opinion of MRI's capabilities.

It seems that MRI are the only hospital I know of that is regularly super-glueing patient's wounds shut rather tha stitching - I just want to feed back that being glued is much better than stitches, so I hope that it stays a regular feature!

When I've had stitches they've always cut through my skin and ended up not holding the wound shut, as well as occationally becoming infected and inflamed due to the lack of a seal.

The glue, on the other hand, held my wounds shut perfectly until the skin knitted and I was amazed at how quickly they healed.

I only have three minor gripes, one being that I was kept in for a lot longer tham I felt necessary (although I really can't complain about being looked after whilst I was sore, I live alone and it was probably for the best - I just don't like using a much needed bed when I shouldn't do), the second that it can take so long to get your medication that you miss a dose, which isn't good when you are on regular pain medication, and the third is that the night staff can be very dismissive - one snapped at a girl who was groaning in pain (she was one of the ones from a different hospital) that she was making herself be in more pain by groaning - it turned out she had very bad internal bleeding, which is extremely painful - many people asking for a bit of help in the night got short shrift.

If all the staff were like that I would assume that it was the workload causing the attitude, but as it was purely one shift I can only assume it's the individuals who are at fault.

Gripes aside, I am grateful and very happy with my treatment and stay at MRI, and won't hesitate to choose this hospital over the other local ones in the future.

Thank you!