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37
THE WORK OF THE HEALTH VISITORS
It was a year of steady development in the concept of the
Health Visitor as the advisor on family health and on social
aspects in the work of the domiciliary team. The use of report
forms to keep the family doctor aware of visits to his patients
continued. They appear to meet a need and have received the
approval of members of the Local Medical Committee. It has, therefore,
now become an established procedure. One of the difficulties
in the development of closer relationship with family doctors
relates to the relatively large changeover in the staff of the
Health visitors' section. As with nursing in general, marriage,
promotion and transfers to other branches of their profession
result in constant resignations and new appointments.
In areas where the Health Visitors change fairly frequently,
the building up of a personal relationship of trust and understanding
between all concerned is for obvious reasons more difficult
to achieve. Recruitment was somewhat easier, but throughout
the year, one or two posts were vacant for varying periods.
Group discussion sessions with a psychiatrist continued and
were well supported.
Training of student Health visitors in practical work, observation
visits by student nurses, pupil midwives and Diploma of
Public Health students are constant features in the Health Visitors'
routine. The need to explain procedures, to see things
through the eyes of many observers, and to re-examine views
Questioned by others is a constant safeguard against complacency
and meaningless repetition. Set out in the Appendix, page 112,
are the usual tables giving details of the work performed during
1956.
IMMUNISATION
The urgent problem is perhaps not to discover more methods
of protecting against different illnesses, but a system of combining
procedures to reduce the number of separate courses of
injection now required. Thus, for children who are likely to
remain in this country, we have at present, vaccination against
smallpox, injections against diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus,
Poliomyelitis and finally vaccination with B.C.G. against tuberculosis.
For diphtheria, tetanus and probably poliomyelitis,
"booster" doses are also required. It is possible to combine
diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus into a single immunising
fluid and to protect against all three by one course of injections.