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The selection of suitable candidates for training is not an easy task.
The applicant needs not only a good educational and professional background but
special qualities of character and personality. Although 19 applications for
sponsored health visitor training were made to this Borough, only one,
who later withdrew, was suitable for training. The Borough therefore has had
no student health visitor on the 1965/1966 course; more promising applications
have been received for the following year.
It is necessary to keep all field staff constantly aware of new techniques,
changing patterns of community life and fresh ideas. Regular staff meetings,
lectures and in-service training are arranged and health visitors are seconded
for refresher courses every five years.
(j) General
In this, our first year, we have continued all existing services
and established separate and more concentrated efforts with regard to
immunisation and the care of toddlers. A special clinic for each service has
been set up at each major centre to cater for them.
Recently there has been a great deal of discussion at government level
with regard to the priorities of health visiting and the way in which health
visiting staff should operate. Several authorities have been attaching- health
visitors to firms of general practitioners and experimenting in the value of
forming specialised teams to work in the field of general community care both
preventive and curative. Prom the current view of these experiments it would
seem that close liaison between the general practitioner and health visitor
in their mutual care of families is highly desirable. Next year it is hoped that
the co-operation that already exists in this Borough between doctors and health
visitors will be further encouraged by the attachment of health visitors to
general practitioner well-baby clinics already in existence.
(k)

DOMICILIARY MIDWIFERY AND HOME NURSES
Throughout the year there were vacancies on the establishment of midwives
and home nurses despite the use of part-time staff. On 31st December, 1965 28 full-time
and 18 part-time home nurses and midwives were employed and there were 6 vacancies
(2.5 home nurses and 3.5 midwives). This created difficulty in covering the needs of
the area particularly in the midwifery field and at times midwives had to forego
their off-duty time and work for long hours when relief was not available. There was
some improvement in the position towards the end of the year.
Not all those wishing for hospital confinement were able to be accommodated
because of the continuing shortage of hospital beds. The practice of early discharge
of some patients confined in hospital creates problems in the domiciliary field but,
provided the cases are planned and services properly co-ordinated, a proportion can
be properly dealt with in this way. This procedure, however, must not be used to
diminish the numbers of mothers having their confinement at home which, in properly
selected cases, has many advantages. The level of home confinements must be kept
high if standards of practice are to be maintained.
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