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NURSING SERVICES.
1972 was a very busy year for the nursing section. A major casue of this was the continued development
of schemes for improving co-operation with general practitioners, hospitals and the Social Services
Department. The number of attachments of nurses directly to general practitioners practices was increased.
The demands for the services of home nurses, both from general practitioners and hospitals, were so great
that additional staff were required to ensure that a good service could continue to be given to the patients
in their own homes.
Links for working with hospitals were also strengthened. The chief nursing officer gave a talk to
hospital nurse tutors on the work of nurses in the community and senior nursing officers took part in
symposia on the same subject to ward and departmental sisters at St. Bartholomew's Hospital and at the
North London Group of Hospitals.
Ward sisters from the North London Group of Hospitals continued to spend occasional days with the
home nurses and many of the Council's nursing staff attended a variety of hospital study days. Arrangements
were also made for hospital midwives to spend a day with their domiciliary colleagues, and for the latter
to do likewise in hospital. It is hoped that an increasing awareness of each other's work by hospital and
community nursing staff will lead to a real continuity of care for the benefit of the patients concerned.
This also is the underlying thought of the general practitioner obstetrician beds scheme with the City
of London Hospital, which was planned in 1971 and came to fruition in 1972. Under this scheme the
general practitioner obstetricians and domiciliary midwives co-operate in ante-natal care, delivery and postnatal
care of mothers. Towards the end of 1972 plans were made for local authority midwives to participate
in the ante-natal care and delivery of patients booked for hospital confinements at the Whittington
Hospital and this is due to start early in 1973.
The Social Services Department asked the nursing section to instruct home helps on the needs of the
elderly, in first aid, posture and lifting, simple nursing procedures and emergency midwifery. Home nurses
gave talks and demonstrations to assistants in the residential homes for the elderly on simple nursing,
lifting and home safety. All nursing staff took part in the survey carried out by the Social Services
Department for the purposes of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act, 1970.
One of the senior nursing officers gave talks to staff from many of the Council's departments on the
emergency treatment of casualties according to the direction of the Local Government Training Board. For
the first time a nursing officer and geriatric visitor were asked to participate in a pre-retirement course run
by one of the larger firms in the Borough.
Staff attended refresher, management and family planning courses. In-service training included the
use of visual aids, seminars in psychiatry for health visitors and school nurses, and visits to the psychiatric
department at St. Bartholomew's Hospital by home nurses.
It has been stated that "the objective in reorganising the National Health Service is to enable health
care to be improved". This has always been the aim of the nursing services in the Borough and will continue
to be our goal in the future.
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