[Report 1958] / Medical Officer of Health, Monmouthshire County Council.

  • Monmouthshire (Wales). County Council.
Date:
1958
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1958] / Medical Officer of Health, Monmouthshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The duties of the Health Visitor are many and varied, and so tactful and fiiendly is her approach that iu most cases her visits are accepted by the people as visits of a friend and counsellor. Which indeed she is! To list her normal functions, one would say t.hat she visits homes to give advice to ex- pectant mothers and to nursing mothers with regard to the welfare of young children, but her supervision carriesi on until the children reach school age. Her interest does mot end there, however, and she still casts a watchful eye over her charges in the guise of School Nurse, as under the Council’s Co- ordinated Service she is designated as a Health Visitor—School Nurse. She gives advice on personal hygiene in cases of tuberculosis, carries out invest- igations as to causes of certain accidents in the home, makes home visits with regard to hospital almoners’ enquiries, performs follow-up visits for ex-hos- pital cases and ensures that childireaii who have sustained accidents at school have received adequate medical attention. Add to this her attendance at Ante- Natal and Child Welfare Clinics, at which she renders invaluable service and includes a good deal of health education, her interest in problem families and her duties in performing periodic inspectioinis at schools, with the necessary follow-up visits, and it will be seen that the Health Visitor is the king-pin of the domiciliary health services. Most new schemes which are formulated seem, at some stage, to involve this branch of the services and the work of the Health Visitor tends to get more and more important and all-embracing. Many Health Visitors attend at School idinics in order to assist at the various sessions held by Consultant Physicians and Surgeons, and by School Medical Officers, and it is becoming a practice that they should attend at Out- Patient Clinics held by Paediatricians at Hospitals. A sense of humour is a useful part of the Health Visitor’s make-up, and it was a saving grace in the case of the young officer who made a visit to a farmhouse in her area, only to hear the son of the house announce to his mother that the Artificial Insemination womatn. had called! This was indeed an unexpected addition to her duties! During the summer of 1958, three Health Visitors attended a two-week refresher course at Oxford. ANTE-NATAL CUNICS. In the County of Monmouth there were 29 Ante-Natal Clinics in oper- ation at the end of 1958, and a total of 14G half-day sessions per month were held. These were all staffed by Medical Officers of the Council s Staff together with Health Visitors. The local County Midwives were encouraged to attend in order to see cases in which they were interested. In the main the Clinics were held a whole or half-day weekly, but in certain cases they were fort- nightly.