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The health visitor is also the interpreter to the family of the
social and preventive Health Services provided by the local
authority, and she could be of great assistance to the general
practitioner in these cases where advice and support is needed as
distinct from the actual nursing work carried out by District
Nurses who have a quite different function to perform.
The duties of the health visitor cover many fields: care of
mothers and young children, responsibility for the supervision of
the health and hygiene of the school child, care and after-care of
tuberculous patients and liaison with the Chest Clinic physician,
responsibility for after-care visits to discharged hospital patients,
and increasingly advising on the care of the aged in their own
homes; and along with all this continual "Health" education of
families in her district—not only in physical matters but in the
factors nowadays considered important in promoting mental
well-being.
To do this exacting work, the practitioner of it requires not
only the specialised training as given in the very exacting Health
Visitor's Certificate Course, but the right personality and a sense of
vocation if she is to influence profoundly the families in her care.
She has a preventive function to perform—to see that the borderline
problem family is enabled to help itself before it falls into the
category requiring the care of the social worker, probation officer
and others, and for this her personality and prestige is allimportant.
We in Leyton are well served by the team of Health
Visitors (never unfortunately at full strength) we have working
for us here.
There is another function the health visitor has lately been
called upon to perform to an unusually marked degree and that is in
a collection of information for Medical Research projects.