Table 4 Illustrative quotes for Theme 3 on patients’ experiences and perspectives on preoperative care in colorectal cancer and abdominal surgery

Personalised Care

“So I had hip replacement surgery and before I had it, they said ‘you should lose 40 pounds and you should do these exercises.’ Well I did it 100%, I lost the 40 pounds, I did the exercises because it was specific and I could understand the benefit. But with this colon cancer, I just don’t see any…you have to tell me something more” (FG3, P8)

“I would say not a need for any. I have managed through diet and exercise for more than two decades. So just knowing my own body.” (FG1, P6)

“I don’t feel like you get specific nutritional care from a hospital nutritionist (P1: Or the food). Yeah, but even aside from that there are bowel disease and these things that we’re dealing with, there’s a real holistic component to them and there is a real nutritional component to them and its super specific. Until that’s sort of learning process seems to change a little bit, I don’t know how they actually offer a service that has value to us individually” (FG1, P3)

“Not just a little pamphlet here’s a pamphlet, like I said before it doesn’t tell me anything. It’s the generic thing they tell everybody, half the stuff that was in the pamphlet wasn’t happening to me. Again, somebody to say, “here’s the things that are going to happen and this is what’s going to be after”” (FG1, P4)

“you might have questions that come up, and if you have a phone number that you can phone and just answer your questions, that would be good, and move on.” (FG2, P4)

“Because mine was a non-cancer and it was like a prophylactic scenario I knew exactly what the surgery was going to be, all the steps in the surgery. Everything about it. But when I went to the pre-admission clinic I got on some sort of treadmill where they were talking to you in a rope sort of way because I’m sure they have to tick boxes off to make sure all the general information was given out the same way but it didn’t feel like it was customized to me.” (FG3, P4)

“there’s a bit of a “one size fits all” thing. We can talk about this later where you know on the post-op I felt that this is written for an “overweight smoker”. Do I really have to wait 6 weeks before I pick up the cat? It just didn’t make sense to me.” (FG3, P1)

“It would be nice to be able to pick up the phone if you have a question. But everyone is so different for everyone else so one size can’t really fit all in this situation.” (FG3, P3)