The National Health Service
1948 1948 1940s 38 pages too few and overworked. When the Service is really adequate, the district nurse should be able to do much more than now to help the family of a patient ill at home ; she will also be able to relieve the doctor of some kinds of work, and to relieve the hospital of the necessi...
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| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
| Language: | English English |
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London : His Majesty's Stationery Office
1948
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/B6B091DD-C5F2-499D-8D7A-1EC0A3CE5E7D http://hdl.handle.net/10796/48573CE9-1246-4BC7-9401-5F0C13556B0A |
| Summary: | 1948
1948
1940s
38 pages
too few and overworked. When the Service is really adequate, the district nurse should be able to do much more than now to help the family of a patient ill at home ; she will also be able to relieve the doctor of some kinds of work, and to relieve the hospital of the necessity of taking patients in merely because there are not enough nurses to care for them at home. The health visitor is a nurse with special training in health education, child welfare and social work. Hitherto she has specialised chiefly in mothercraft, though some health visitors have also visited the homes of sufferers from tuberculosis, mental illness and venereal disease. But under the new Service she is the friend and adviser of the whole family. The Health Act requires the Local Health Authorities to arrange a home-visiting service for 'giving advice as to the care of young children, persons suffering from illness and expectant or nursing mothers, and as to the measures necessary to prevent the spread of infection'. On behalf of the authority (though she may be employed by a voluntary organisation) the health visitor visits the home of every newborn baby at least once during its first few weeks, and answers questions about the care of children, putting parents in touch with social services they may need. Hitherto she has largely worked in conjunction with the doctors working in the 4,000 infant welfare centres, but the aim is that she should work in much closer contact with the family doctor, so that he can readily call her in when he finds a family needing advice or social service which she can give or arrange. In most places nurses with much the same training as health visitors watch over the health and cleanliness of children at school, making any necessary home visits ; but in London school nursing and home visits for school children are separated, the latter being done mainly by voluntary welfare workers. In the towns the midwife, the home nurse and the health visitor are different persons, each giving better service by being able to specialise ; but in country districts the home nurse is usually also the midwife, and not uncommonly the health visitor and school nurse as well. Some people hold that the uniting of all these duties in one woman is right and necessary in the villages. But the general view is that health visiting, if not midwifery too, is better separated from sick nursing wherever this can be done without obliging the health visitor or midwife to travel very long distances daily. A fourth home service which Local Health Authorities may provide is 'domestic help for households where such help is required owing to the presence of any person who is ill, lying-in, an expectant mother, mentally defective, aged, or a child not over compulsory school age'. The Act does not compel the authorities to do this, because such a course was thought unwise while labour remains so scarce. Authorities 20
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |