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57
SUPPLEMENT
Items of interest concerning the Health Service adminis°
tered by the Middlesex County Council as Local Health
Authority
HOME NURSING SERVICE
Home Nursing is a difficult subject to review in a
series of statistical tables. Nursing is a professional
service of a purely personal character which cannot readily
be reduced to a formula of figures. Nevertheless, it is
essential to have available all the information that can
be obtained. The only way to administer a steadily expanding
service, such as Home Nursing, is to study all the
relevant, and even the seemingly irrelevant, available
facts.
The first consideration in preparing such statistics
is to decide whether "cases" or "visits'5 shall be the
standard by which to make comparisons. The difficulty with
regard to 'cases" is that there are such wide differences
between individual cases. One case", perhaps of diabetes
or of disseminated sclerosis, may need a daily visit for
several years. Another case" may need one visit only
despite the fact that he is suffering from one of the
conditions just mentioned. In 1955, one patient had as
many as 587 visits during that year alone and this emphas
izes the difficulty of making realistic comparisons on
the basis of numbers of cases suffering from particular
conditions.
Statistics based upon visits" would seem to offer a
more reliable basis for making comparisons. A "visit",
however, may be for the purpose of simply giving an injec
tion, taking a bare ten minutes, or the "visit" may be
made to give general nursing care to a very ill person,
taking best part of an hour and even requiring the presence
of two nurses.
All these factors need to be borne in mind, therefore,
when considering the statistics now presented regarding
Home Nursing within the Ealing portion of Area 7 during
the three years, 1953, 1954 and 1955. Perhaps their greatest
value lies in the general impression they give of the
trend in the nursing services provided for a population
of about 185,000.
Table A gives a general summary of the work during
the three years. This Table shows that the number of new