The Health Services White Paper : The Labour Party's policy
1944-09 1944 1940s 22 pages - 10 - 3. Temporary health centres, built for example from Ministry of Works standard huts, should be given a high building priority. 4. Permanent health centres should be dignified and well-designed buildings set in their own grounds but near public transport routes....
| Institution: | MCR - The Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick |
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| Language: | English English |
| Published: |
September 1944
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10796/1FA2793C-9E80-4121-B882-5986826BADFB http://hdl.handle.net/10796/794B747D-0BE4-47A3-948E-5B46EA236A78 |
| Summary: | 1944-09
1944
1940s
22 pages
- 10 - 3. Temporary health centres, built for example from Ministry of Works standard huts, should be given a high building priority. 4. Permanent health centres should be dignified and well-designed buildings set in their own grounds but near public transport routes. A worthy appearance will do much to encourage the public to use them. 5. To encourage their construction, 90%, (or even 100%) grants should be given to the owning authorities. 6. The centre should include a lecture hall for health educational purposes, and for professional meetings, as well as a committee room. 7. There should be three advisory committees attached to each centre:- (a) A Medical Staff Committee. (b) A Health Workers' Committee. (c) A Health Education and Public Relations Committee. If these proposals are carried out, the Labour Party believes that the success of the health centre experiment, from the points of view of the public, the doctors, and the other health workers, will be assured. The conditions of work of general practitioners. If the doctors are to serve the community as well as possible, their conditions of work must be thoroughly satisfactory. It goes without saying, for example, that each doctor in a health centre must have his own individual consulting room. He must have adequate off-duty times, holidays and refresher courses. But there are more important points than the physical conditions of work. Many doctors have justifiable fears of State Service:- (a) Will it mean an increase in forms to be filled in and regulations to be observed? In a properly organised national health service, every doctor should have full clerical assistance, to relieve him of the clerking with which he wastes much of his time at present. Some forms and returns there must be; but a small team of statisticians should study them constantly, to get rid of every unnecessary return. (b) Will it mean supervision of one doctor by another in his professional work? A doctor is a person who must take full responsibility for each of his patients; if he has to think of pleasing a superior as well as curing the sick, he will shift responsibility and do bad work. Once his period of assistantship is over, every doctor must work with full responsibility for his patients. (c) Will it mean the end of professional, intellectual, and political freedom? At present, a doctor in some branches of the public service may not speak or write about his work without permission from his superiors. He may not take part in national or local politics. Doctors fear a National Health Service may impose these odious conditions on the entire profession. If it were so, it would be the negation of democracy.
292/847/3/166 |
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| Physical Description: | TEXT |