[Report 1911-1912] / School Medical Officer of Health, Lanark County Council.

  • Lanarkshire (Scotland). County Council.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1911-1912] / School Medical Officer of Health, Lanark County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/74 (page 11)
    which definite instructions might be given by the Education Department. Facilities for the Conduct of Medical Examination.—The lack of proper accommodation for the efficient carrying out of medical examination of school children is one of the problems which demands immediate solution. However enthusiastic or however skilled a medical officer may be, it is impossible to carry out the various processes in the examination with any degree of accuracy in a room which is wretchedly lit by nat- ural light and is lacking altogether in artificial light. Nor can the testing of a child’s hearing or the auscultation of his chest be satisfactory when in the adjacent rooms, separated, it may be, merely by thin partitions, there is on one side simultaneous singing and on the other musical drill in full swing. There are always certain noises incidental to every school, and it is probably too much to expect that medical inspection should be carried out in absolute stillness, but, at any rate, the room allotted for this purpose should be as quiet as it is possible to have it in a school. Again, there is, unfortunately, a wide, diversity of opinion amongst teachers as to what constitutes a suitable place for the examination of pupils, and instances have been met where the teacher had arranged that the medical examination should be conducted in one of the cloak-rooms in which there may or may not be a window ! It must be understood that in vision testing the pupil stands at a dis- tance of 6 metres from the test card which must be hung up in a good light, so that whatever room is granted for the pur- poses of medical inspection it should fulfil certain conditions both as regards space and light. Headmasters are particularly asked, therefore, to place at the disposal of the School Medical Officers the room which is most suitable as regards size, lighting, and freedom from noises even though it may tempor- arily cause some little disturbance in their class arrangements. This granting of the best possible room applies principally to the yearly routine examination of which due notice is always given, and is not so necessary at the unannounced revisits. In one or two of the more recently built schools special provision has been made to have one of the rooms suitable for the medical examination of the pupils, and it is to be hoped that in all schools which may be built in future a special room will be set apart which will be suitable in respect of size, lighting, and situation for the proper and efficient conduct of the medical examination.