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53
patients from Tottenham and Hornsey are constantly working to the limit of their capacity ,
as are the domiciliary midwives. While we wait hopefully for an increase in the numberof
maternity beds in the area, the only way there seems to be any hope of increasing the
number of mothers who have the advantages of a booked hospital bed is to foster schemes
for early discharge from hospital after the birth to adequate care at home, This would
bring increased turnover in the labour wards and new work for midwifery staff on the
district and the staffing position in these two spheres has to be kept constantly under
review.
No one likes the system whereby patients are admitted on the Emergency Bed Service;
not the family doctors disturbed during the night, nor the hospital staff receiving patients
they do not know, nor the clinic staff trying ceaselessly by letters and telephone calls to
find an alternative, nor least of all the patient who is anxious and in suspense until
the last moment. We all work for and look forward to the day when we are in a position to
abandon it. But as the situation is, the Emergency Bed Service is an extremely efficient
and well run organisation the absence of which would cause greater hardships and possible
risks to mother and child.
The percentage of expectant mothers making at least one attendance at one of the
local authority ante-natal clinics was 52.0% in 1962 compared with 61.2% the previous year.