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44
(d) To collaborate with the Clinical Research Committee.
Conditions of membership are as follows:—
Membership of the Society is open to whole-time or part-time medical or
dental officers of the Service who have completed at least six months'
continuous service.
Visiting membership is open to past members having three years' membership
or such others as the Council of the Society decide and is subject
to annual nomination and election by the Society.
Honorary life membership is open to persons specially nominated by the
Council of the Society.
During the year the Society held nine clinical meetings at hospitals and two
discussion meetings at County Hall; the subject at the first discussion meeting was
the treatment of the bleeding peptic ulcer, and at the second it was subarachnoid
haemorrhage. At the clinical meetings cases of wide variety and interest were
shown. The lowest attendance at any meeting has been 74, and the highest was
135 at the meeting in December at Lambeth Hospital (with St. Giles' Hospital
co-operating).
Membership of the Society was 320 at the end of the year.
Staff
Staff on War
Service
Since the outbreak of war, 1,203 members of the hospitals permanent staff
have been called up for service with H.M. Forces, including 51 medical officers,
79 female and 170 male nurses, 514 porters, 207 clerks and 182 other staff; and
in addition 25 men and 15 women from the permanent staff have undertaken work
in war industry, the Merchant Navy, the Women's Land Army or hospital nursing
services. As regards temporary staff, 366 members of all grades left to undertake
war service.
Sixty-three members of the special and general hospital staff were killed in
action or died on war service. By the end of the year, 322 members of the staff had
been discharged from H.M. Forces and had returned to duty at the hospitals.
The ending of hostilities did not alleviate staffing shortages to any extent and
considerable difficulty continues to be experienced in obtaining nursing staff, medical
auxiliaries and male and female domestic staff. With the progress of demobilisation,
however, it is hoped that the difficulties in respect of male staff at least will
largely disappear.
Scales of
salary and
conditions of
service
From the point of view of the stair employed by the Council, one of the outstanding
features of the year was the extension of the attempt to provide nationally
accepted standards of pay and working conditions for many grades of staff, negotiated
by joint committees of employers and employees. During the year further recommendations
of the committees dealing with nursing and laboratory staff were adopted
by the Council for its staff. The work of two further committees, dealing with
domestic staff and medical auxiliaries, was nearing completion at the end of the year
and national standard scales will doubtless be operative by the time this report is
published. In addition, the Minister of Health and the Minister of Labour and
National Service have recommended codes of working conditions and conditions of
service for nurses and midwives and domestic staff at hospitals. Most of the
conditions recommended were already observed in the Council's hospitals, but it is
the intention that they should all come into force throughout the hospital service
as soon as possible.
Demobilised
doctors
Many medical practitioners are now being demobilised from H.M. Forces,
and it has been realised that their conditions of work in the Forces and their limited
experience in certain fields of medicine may have left many of them in need of
refresher courses before taking up civilian work. The Minister of Health has
accordingly asked voluntary hospitals and local hospital authorities to provide such
facilities. The Council is providing for three classes of demobilised medical