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practitioners by ensuring that health visitors and home nurses,
whether attached to general practices or operating from child
health centres, lose no opportunity of encouraging women to be
screened regularly. Similarly, regular advertisement in the local
press of the services available is an effective adjunct to this
person-to-person publicity.
In conclusion, there can be no doubt that the visit of the
mobile unit and the attendant greatly appreciated voluntary
effort has served a valuable purpose in crystallising firm
impressions concerning the effectiveness of the various
publicity media available. The experience gained as a result of
this venture will be put to good use in furthering the sustained
effort which alone can persuade women as a whole to recognise
the important new frontier of preventive medicine which screening
for pre-symptomatic disease at an early, eminently curable, stage
represents.
Ante-natal and post-natal care
The midwives work in close co-operation with the general
practitioners and five midwives attend ante-natal clinics in
doctors' surgeries. Weekly ante-natal clinics are held by the
midwives at seven of the centres, a doctor being in attendance
once a month at each of the clinics to take blood samples.
The patients delivered in hospital usually return to that
hospital for post-natal examinations, or, if preferred, attend
their general practitioners. Those patients delivered at home or
in the General Practitioner Obstetric Unit of the Weir Maternity
Hospital are examined by their general practitioner. It is the
responsibility of the health visitor, visiting the mother following
confinement, to ensure that the mother is aware of the importance
of receiving post-natal care, and to encourage her to accept the
post-confinement medical examination and advice on family
planning.