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The home nurses continue to liaise very closely with the general
practitioner, and the principle of ensuring that the patient's doctor, or in
the case of patients under the care of the hospital, the hospital doctor,
should contact the district nursing service and request that certain treatments
should be performed has been strictly adhered to, as it is essential
that only the patients' private doctor or hospital doctor should initiate or
change the treatment, and this lessens the possibility of misunderstanding.
A wide range of nursing care treatments has been carried out, varying
from observational type visits to the giving of general nursing care to bedridden
or terminal patients.
Two untrained auxiliary nurses have been appointed to bathe carefully
selected patients who do not require any other type of nursing care.
This has proved to be very successful as their use has released trained nurses
enabling them to spend more time on general and rehabilatative care. The
improved service is beneficial to both patient and hard pressed relatives.
The appointment of the auxiliary nurses has been achieved without
increasing the home nursing establishment.
It has been decided that the organisation of the home nursing service
would benefit from the extension of the duties of two of the staff to
include some supervision of the service at field level.
The nurses selected, who would be very experienced, would be
designated senior nurses, would continue to carry out nursing treatments,
and would also be available to deal adequately with some problems and
give advice and encouragement to less experienced district nurses.
The Superintendent of the home nursing services attended various
liaison meetings, and gave talks on district nursing and midwifery to Harrow
schools.