[Report 1963] / Medical Officer of Health, Hastings County Borough.

  • Hastings (England). County Borough Council.
Date:
1963
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1963] / Medical Officer of Health, Hastings County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/126 (page 4)
    scheme on the lines of the school child’s periodic medical inspection continued to grow, a second session becoming necessary. 802 children made an attend- ance at the Centres during their first year of life, with a total attendance of over 20.000. The Home Nursing and Midwifery service, with 129 home confinements and over 57,000 home nursing attendances suffered slightly from difficulty in recruitment of suitable trained staff. As an ever-increasing part of their work is among elderly people, sometimes unable to wash and dress them- selves properly and sometimes incontinent into the bargain, the need for amendment of the establishment by the gradual replacement of trained staff as they leave the service by untrained auxiliaries on the same lines as the attendants we have in our old peoples’ homes must be considered seriously. Discussions were entered upon with the Hospital Management Committee regarding the transfer of the Part Two midwife training school to the Buchanan Hospital, and this is scheduled to take place in December, 1964. The pressure on the Home Help Services has become so severe that it has already been necessary to accelerate the expansion proposed in the Council's original Ten Year Plan, even so it is impossible at present to meet all needs throughout the year. 544 people were helped and nearly 73,000 home help hours were worked. The administrative strain should be eased by the appointment of an Assistant Organiser in August, 1964. I have already paid tribute to the wonderful work done by the Home Helps, and for that matter the ambulance crews and other services, during the terrible weather conditions at the start of the year. Concerning Health Visiting, it was possible during the year to start the experimental attachment of a health visitor to a group of general practitioners. At the time of writing, the one year period of this experiment has terminated and there is no shadow of doubt that it has been extremely successful: both the general practitioners and the health visitor concerned have found the new condition of working most satisfying, the doctors have found how greatly “their own health visitor can help their work, and patients have fully approved. A more detailed report is included as Appendix A. It is to be hoped that this scheme can gradually be extended as the staff position permits to those other general practitioners who wish it. The increasing importance of a fully organized expert health education scheme was underlined heavily in the summer of 1964 by the Aberdeen typhoid outbreak, where the excellent health education set-up played a major part in containing the outbreak and preventing any spread after the initial explosion of 400 cases. I was more glad than ever that the Council had agreed to send a health visitor to take the London University Diploma in Health Education last September so that she can bring expert guidance to our present efforts and can co-ordinate them. The Ambulance Service has again had to deal with the highest yet number of cases and there was a considerable increase in mileage covered. A new ambulance station is scheduled in the Capital Works programme for 1965/6 and is badly needed: I draw attention to the Ambulance Officer’s report and particularly to the warning that a wholetime around the clock service operated from a Central Station will have to be considered as a replacement for the present standby service and call-out system at nights and weekends.