"3 days stay for cyst removal"

Initially admitted to Southampton general hospital, discovered a large tumour constricting one of my organs. Drs made arrangements to surgically remove this. Unfortunately they had some emergency admissions that evening and their theatre was filled. I consented to be transferred to Princess Anne as I was told their theatre was free and it would help me avoid any extra delays.

It's very difficult to comment on my stay at Princess Annes without giving examples / dissolving into a rant.

I've tried to water it down a bit into the following:

I found that the staff did not respect patient wishes. I say this in regards to patients choice of treatment, or physical decisions. For example 20 minutes after I regained consciousness from major abdominal surgery, a member of staff took my bed controls out of my hands and forced me to bend at the abdomen and sit up. I understand that it is 'important to get up and moving after surgery' to make sure you heal correctly, but I required a bit more recovery time and the member of staff continued to do this regardless of the fact that I was begging and screaming for them to stop.

The majority of the nurses were polite but I did witness some aggression from some of the nurses that were overworked. One nurse in particular leant right over a patient in bed so that they could shout into her face. The patient had been crying and begging the nurse to make the pain stop. Apparently the patient had been 'rude to the nurse' by raising her voice when she made this request.

The hospital was extremely clean, so there's that I suppose. Visiting hours seemed quite limited, my partner tried to visit me at 12:00 midday and was told that he would only be allowed in between 3pm and 5pm. Luckily the nurses did not visit my ward very often so he was able to sneak in to deliver some clean clothes for me.

Our ward seemed a bit understaffed, we were visited once every few hours but none of the nurses really spoke to us or made conversation other than 'Is your DOB ….? Swallow these tablets'

There was also a bit of an issue with patient buzzers, as I found that on several occasions the nurses moved emergency buzzers to locations that were completely out of patient reach.

Fortunately the surgeons at Princess Annes are excellent which gives patients a head start on their recovery time. For me, after witnessing the way that patients were treated by some members of staff and with so little monitoring I did not feel safe staying at this hospital. I left within 24 hours of my operation. I followed the normal discharge procedures but I was not given follow up advice, so I'm quite glad I didn't have any complications.