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14
Just as good health is too frequently presented as a state of not
being ill, so, conversely, at the opposite end of the scale of wellbeing
has too much attention focused on death rather than disability. Yet in
its finality death has no sting for the individual in strong contrast to
the daunting prospect facing those who are permanently and severely
disabled by injury or disease. Indeed for close relatives the latter
ordeal may not fall far short of, and sometimes may even exceed, the
anguish of bereavement. Such considerations lend additional force to
the cause of prevention and make even more imperative the effective
deployment of the resources available both nationally and locally.
Current developments in Wandsworth. One of the largest and most
central of the London boroughs, with a thriving industrial and commercial
community, soon to be reinforced by the development of the
new Covent Garden market at Nine Elms, Wandsworth has a resident
population of some 336,000 with a correspondingly large number of
schools, colleges, hospitals and general medical practices. Recently
St. James' Hospital, Balham, has been developed as a district general
hospital; St. George's Hospital and the associated schools of medicine
and nursing have begun the move from Hyde Park Corner to their
new permanent home at Tooting where a branch of the Public Health
Laboratory Service and a very modern regional blood transfusion
centre are already located; similarly, the Westminster Hospital has
been developing its links with Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton.
which include the establishment there of a University Department of
Obstetrics. Extensive geriatric facilities are available at St. John's
Hospital, Battersea, and St. Benedict's Hospital, Tooting, and ample
beds for the mentally ill at Springfield and Tooting Bee. Smaller
general units include the Putney, Bolingbroke and, for the time being
Battersea, General Hospitals.
Excellent liaison has long existed in the geriatric and mental health
fields and this is in the process of being strengthened in relation to
mental illness, through an arrangement whereby St. George's Hospital
will provide consultant psychiatric advice to the Social Services Department
for two sessions each week commencing next April. In effect a
University Department of Psychiatry will be closely linked with the
community mental health service. Another link with St. George's Hospital
will be forged shortly when the Board of Governors, the South
West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board and the Inner London
Education Authority will jointly appoint a consultant Ear, Nose and
Throat surgeon who will be asked to hold special sessions for children
at the Tooting Child Health Clinic at Amen Corner. Close contact is
being developed with both medical and nursing students at St. George's
and the first group of student nurses—required under the new basic
nursing training syllabus to spend a period in the field learning about
the community services—have now been attached to the Department;
their programme has been arranged by the Principal Nursing Officer
in conjunction with the Public Health Nursing Tutor recently appointed
by the Hospital to co-ordinate this aspect of training.
At Queen Mary's Hospital, Roehampton, arrangements are now
being completed for the provision of short in-service refresher courses
for district nurses—in the pre-operative, operative and post-operative
phases of hospital nursing—as an integral part of a pre-planned early
discharge scheme which in suitable cases will enable surgical patients
to have their dressings changed and sutures removed at home by the