London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
Hackney 1970
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Hackney]
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31
HEALTH VISITING
The health visitor is a trained nurse with post registration qualifications
in obstetrics and health visiting, who provides a continuing service to families
and individuals in the community.
In some areas she works very closely with the family doctor, but she is a
practitioner in her own right, detecting cases of need on her own initiative as
well as acting on referrals. She has skills and knowledge particular to her
work and these are drawn from her nursing background and from the additional
preparation in her health visiting course.
Her work has five main aspects
1. The prevention of mental, physical, and medical ill health and its
consequences,
2. Early detection of ill health and the surveillance of high risk
groups,
3. Recognition and identification of need and mobilisation of appropriate
resources where necessary,
4. Health teaching,
5. Provision of care; this will include support during periods of
stress, and advice and guidance in cases of illness as well as in
the care and management of children. The health visitor is not
however actively engaged in technical nursing procedures.
She has a statutory duty to visit every new born baby following the notification
of birth, thus laying the foundation for a lasting relationship with the
family. No other worker at present combines the type of knowledge and skills
outlined. The service the health visitor offers is essential if medico/social
problems are to be contained within manageable proportions in relation to
available resources in money and personnel, quite apart from the promotion of
the health of the community in its widest sense.
The statistical table set out below gives an indication of the nature of her visits but it must be borne in mind that this represents only a portion of her duties.
| Type of Case | Number visited |
|---|---|
| Children born in 1970 | 4,055 |
| Children born in 1969 | 3,617 |
| Children born between 1965 and 1968 | 8, 316 |
| Persons aged 65 or over | 713 |
| Mentally disordered persons | 81 |
| Persons, excluding maternity cases, discharged from hospital (other than mental hospitals) | 117 |
| Tuberculous households | 57 |
| Households visited on account of other infectious diseases | 31 |
| Other cases | 1,273 |
Because of the improvement in the recruitment of health visitors for
sponsorship, eleven additional health visitors were in post by September bringing
the total health visiting staff to 46, including 8 Centre Superintendents. It
was, therefore, possible to reduce the individual health visitors' case load to
approximately four hundred families from the previously high number of near
seven hundred.
Arrangements were made for one health visitor to work with the medical and
nursing staff at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children for three sessions
each week for the purpose of improving total patient care to the young child
particularly with regard to follow up in the community.