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15
The non-notifiable diseases, Measles, Rubella, Mumps,
Chicken Pox and Whooping Cough, are visited by the School
Nurses, and in doubtful cases by one of the Medical Officers when
there is no doctor in attendance.
Similar action is taken in respect of children kept at home
on account of a " rash."
Infectious visiting takes up a considerable part of the Nurse's
visiting time.
To be effective it must be done as soon as the notification
arrives, and cases may be some distance apart, thus taking much
longer than the "Following up" visits, which a nurse arranges
according to their proximity.
Sometimes the cases prove to be not infectious, and often on
visiting no one is found at home, so that the number of actual
cases does not represent all the visits paid.
In some districts Attendance Officers do this work, but it
must be considered more satisfactory to send & nurse who can give
the mothers advice as to the management of the illness. Also in
cases where no doctor certifies, and these cases are vastly in the
majority, it does not seem fitting that it should be left to an Attendance
Officer to decide as to the nature of the illness.
But this visiting does cut right across the orderly planning of
the nurse's visiting, and as it takes precedence, other visiting
suffers accordingly. This is particularly so during epidemics, when
practically all other visits have to be sacrificed to meet the
emergency.