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Domiciliary Visits
The following visits were carried out by midwives to their patients
other than attendance at the actual confinement:—
Visits during the ante-natal period 1,673
Post-natal visits to home confinements 2,725
Post-natal visits to 48-hour and other early
discharges from hospitial 5,609
Total 10,007
Attendances at Clinics
Three hundred and eleven ante-natal clinic sessions were held by
midwives during the year and 110 women attended these clinics for
the first time.
The total number of attendances at midwives' ante-natal clinics
was 663.
Transfers to Hospital
The undermentioned patients booked for home confinements
were transferred to hospital:—
(a) During pregnancy 17
(b) During labour 2
All patients transferred to hospital during labour are accompanied
by a midwife except on the rare occasions when the Emergency Obstetric
Squad has been called from the hospital.
HOME NURSING
Introduction
The demands for nursing care to be given to patients within
their own homes continues to rise. The demands come from general
practitioners who do not wish to admit their patients to hospital
unless and until it is vital to do so, and increasingly from hospital
Consultants who are gradually realising the expertise of the highly
trained district nursing sisters.
During the year district nursing sisters paid 117,297 visits, an
increase from 1971 of 8,655. Although 77% of these visits were to the
elderly the number of patients under 65 years of age for whom visits
were requested for the first time increased by 25%.
It has not been possible this year to increase the number of staff
working with general practitioners in primary health care teams. To
organise work in this way requires extra staff; not only to meet the
extra work load that inevitably follows the attachment of nursing
staff to groups of general practitioners, but because much increased
time is spent travelling over large parts of the Borough to nurse the
widely scattered patients on a doctor's practice list, rather than to
those confined within a geographical area.
During 1972 there has been an increase of 25 % in the number of
patients treated by district nursing sisters within general practitioner
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