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ways. Health visitors have called upon or contacted general
medical practitioners by telephone on such matters as feeding
difficulties of babies, illness of mothers, including mental
disturbances, illness of aged persons, to discuss departures from
normal health of mothers and children of pre-school or school age,
to report the illness of a child suspected of neglect.
General medical practitioners have assisted the Health
Department by referring expectant mothers to local clinics for
additional ante-natal care, by requesting the services of home
helps for sick people or for the aged, by referring cases for
convalescence, by reporting cases of persons who were not able to
care for themselves properly and for whom hospital accommodation
was unobtainable, and also for passing on advice or information to
the health visitor on those cases in which the health visitor
sought the family doctor's advice.
In my opinion this interchange of information and assistance
is to be commended as providing a better service for the public
and more cordial relations between members of the local health
service.
Ministry of Health Food Survey
This survey was undertaken with the assistance of health
visitors in January and about 25 Tottenham mothers took part in it
with the field workers of the Ministry,
Virus Infection During Pregnancy
Health visitors and medical staff are assisting in keeping
records of a group of mothers in this and other areas from
pregnancy until the child's second birthday. This information is
being obtained for the Ministry of Health investigation of virus
infections during pregnancy.
HOME NURSING (SECTION 25)
The demands on the home nursing service continued to increase
during 1952 and at the end of the year the nursing staff was very
nearly up to full establishment. It was not found any easier to
recruit resident nurses to live in Bruce Grove Nurses Home,
Tottenham and, in fact, by the end of the year, the numbers in
residence (including the Superintendent) had fallen from 6 to 4.