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44
Better co-operation between General Practitioners and Health
Visitors is a topic frequently discussed but little understood,
possibly because both parties lacked time to really get to know
and understand each other's work. One family doctor practising
on a Corporation Housing Estate acts as the Medical Officer for
one session a week in a Corporation Infant Welfare Centre, at
which only children on his medical list attend. During the year
under review this arrangement has overcome initial difficulties
and a Health Education programme shared between the Doctor and
the Health Visitor was working very well. In another part of the
town a family doctor invited the Health Visitor to assist him at
the Infant Welfare Clinic which he holds weekly in his own
surgery. Not only does she weigh babies but advises generally on
health problems. In addition this Health Visitor deals with all
the families with children under five years of age on the
particular doctor's medical list. She is thus able to discuss
with him problems which she meets on her visits, and to coordinate
the work of the family doctor and the Health Department.
Where such direct liaison is not possible, Health Visitors try
to make special opportunities to discuss the more pressing
problems which they meet with the family doctor concerned.
1963 was the year in which our former ability to recruit
trained Health Visitors virtually ceased. With the prospect of
vacancies early in 1964 it was agreed that sponsoring of students
for Health Visitor training had become essential, and this
policy was initiated.
Figures of work carried out are shown in Appendix, page 120.