The National Health Service
1948 1948 1940s 38 pages are, however, doing their best to build up the home help service because of the great relief it can bring to their home nurses and midwives. The aim is to enlarge the Service until the doctor and the family can rely on it in emergency as readily as they rely on the home nurs...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
London : His Majesty's Stationery Office
1948
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/8F5E1A9B-8446-46FF-A6EB-65C8351A026D http://hdl.handle.net/10796/28BFA79E-04D3-40BA-BCA5-FB8301AD187B |
| Summary: | 1948
1948
1940s
38 pages
are, however, doing their best to build up the home help service because of the great relief it can bring to their home nurses and midwives. The aim is to enlarge the Service until the doctor and the family can rely on it in emergency as readily as they rely on the home nurse. Where it is obtainable, home help is free to families who cannot afford to pay ; others are expected to meet a reasonable charge. Care, After-care and Transport With the midwife goes the free supply of a maternity outfit for home confinement. For the sick the district nurse is usually able to lend simple articles of sick-room equipment, while sufferers from tuberculosis are usually given sputum flasks and other necessities. The Local Health Authorities now have a general power (which the Minister can make into a duty by stages) to 'make arrangements for the purpose of the prevention of illness, the care of persons suffering from illness or mental defectiveness, or the after-care of such persons'. The Government has asked them to use this power to lend or lease a much wider range of aids and comforts for the sick room, home confinement and convalescence — such things as bedpans, bedding, feeding cups, steam kettles, waterbeds, crutches and wheel chairs (for convalescence), and many more. When necessary for proper medical care or for recovery of full health, such articles will be available, not only to the patients of home nurses and midwives, but also as far as possible to other patients nursed at home by relatives or friends. Charges may be made for the loan of these articles according to the patient's ability to pay. One 'care and after-care' service was already a duty of Local Health Authorities, namely the service for the tuberculous. For the tuberculosis patient, it is necessary that medical care should be combined with attention to the general welfare of the patient and his family since this is essential for the effective treatment and control of tuberculosis, with its special social and economic problems. Many local schemes, relying a great deal on voluntary workers and funds, existed to provide the tuberculous with the knowledge and help they need to live the kind of life which will save them from relapse and their families from infection. The Local Health Authorities must now see that adequate schemes for this purpose exist everywhere. They must arrange for health instruction in the home, and they have the power to do almost anything — except make money payments — that is required, including the establishment of the 'night sanatoria' which some of the large cities are planning, and of special workshops or settlements for 'sheltered employment' under healthy conditions. Local Health Authorities, though no longer responsible for running mental hospitals and mental deficiency institutions, continue to discharge important functions in the Mental Health Service. Through their 21
21/1489 |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | TEXT |