St Isan Road Surgery 2019-07-07 Person 3 5 0

I (with 4/5 generations of my family!) have been a patient of this surgery, in various locations as it has expanded, for most of my life, from the days of Dr. Thomas, and can remember Dr. Watson starting, and an even younger Dr. Smith some decades later. Yes, things have gone down a little, mostly over the past decade, but much of that is to do with politics and changing social attitudes fuelled by mass media. And more so since Dr. Smith has retired, who I suspect was acting as a brake to these changes. Increased political interference has put pressure on the doctors to do specific things in specific ways, to meet targets, toe the political lines, which has in turned somewhat spoiled the patient-doctor relationship. Other surgeries around North Cardiff have closed, and St. Isan Rd. has taken up the extra workload as best it can, and of course, that has meant more work, building work, more staff, longer waits, shorter consultations, and many other things. Blame the parties in government over the last 4 decades, the media, the multinationals, the World Trade Organisation, the democratic system that allows us to be ruled by social hysteria, and of course the people who continue to vote for The Wrong People. Don't blame the doctors! I've found Dr. Bagshaw (Note spelling please!) to be a very competent doctor indeed, within the restrictions of the political climate and her own, humanly reasoned, but patient affecting, especially regarding strong analgesics, biases. That bias seems to have spread, perhaps from socio-political hysteria, perhaps through government policies or ethics committees or so, to many, if not all, of the other doctors at the surgery, which is no good thing, but will, when calmer, more rational thoughts prevail, pass. It is not fair to blame individual doctors for this. Remember, they are people, just like you or I, and are fallible as we are, and subject to a horrendous deluge of rules and regulations from various governing bodies, myriad "facts" from drug companies eager to make a profit from the new "Safer" drugs (and of course more profitable, as often as not less efficacious and sometimes downright dangerous), social and economic pressures, personal biases based on their own, equally human-limited, life experience, and, like all of us, have moments of misjudgement, mistake or madness. We are human, as are they. We need to understand them as we wish them to understand us. While I may dislike the way things are going, this is not something unique to a specific doctor, a specific surgery, area, town. It is a Britain-wide disease at least, and possibly attributable international free trade agreements at some point if we were to dig deep enough. I can assure you, if you want to find those with Bad Intentions for Good Healthcare, they are not anyone I have met as a patient at St. Isan Rd Surgery. Rather they are the people most written about in, or printing, newspapers, on television and the radio, the career politicians in this country and in others, the laissez faire capitalists, the City Of London, he people promoting Homeopathy, Reiki, Antivaxers, Mindfulness, the wilfully ignorant. The site does not ask for a "star rating" for the Doctor, but I wish to give one anyway. Dr. Macloughlin, 4/5 (probably deserves a 5 but can be "a Bit Brusque" at times) Dr. Bagshaw 4/5 (probably deserves a 5, but has a problem with analgesics!) Dr. Brooks 3.5/5 (Possibly after One Bad Day, or would be a 4/5 or better) Dr. Williams 3.5/5 (as he places statistics over patient experience) Dr. Ridgeway N/A as I've not seen her yet. 5/5 with honours for Dr. Thomas and Dr. Smith, though both retired now. Don't blame the Doctors or the surgery - blame the electorate!