[Report 1958] / Medical Officer of Health, Somerset County Council.

  • Somerset (England). County Council.
Date:
1958
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1958] / Medical Officer of Health, Somerset County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/88 (page 8)
    NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE ACTS CARE OF MOTHERS AND YOUNG CHILDREN The practice of the ante-natal patient attending her own doctor for maternity medical services has continued and the local Health Autho¬ rity ante-natal clinics now are mainly centres for taking of blood for ex¬ amination, for medical examination of the occasional patient who refuses to see her own doctor, and for a limited amount of intermediate supervi¬ sion and parentcraft teaching by the midwife. We find, however, that teaching is carried out more successfully at separate sessions. This transfer of ante-natal care from the clinic to the patient’s doctor is the foreseen, right, and logical development. In rural and small urban areas 68 doctors or doctor-partnerships arrange to see their ante-natal patients, with the midwife in attendance, either at special sessions in their surgery or at the patient’s home. This Co-operation in ante-natal care is most valuable with the doctor and midwife working as a team. In a few in¬ stances similar arrangements exist in the larger towns but with many doc¬ tors in one area it would not be possible to provide a midwife for each ante-natal clinic. In addition as an experiment, it was arranged in Bridg¬ water that at the Mary Stanley Maternity Home each doctor who so wished should be allocated a specified time for seeing his patients, whether the confinement was to be domiciliary or institutional. This has proved a popular arrangement with the12 doctors who take part and appears to be working satisfactorily. Parentcraft teaching has been extended not only in the homes but also in classes at which ante-natal exercises and relaxation are taught. Co-operation between hospital and local authority staff in this field has added to their value. Such classes are held at Taunton, Bridgwater, Weston-super-Mare, Yeovil, Glastonbury, Shepton Mallet, Crewkerne, Prome, Wincanton, Bishops Lydeard, Minehead, Radstock and Watchet. In addition by the end of 1958, 17 individual midwives had attended a Parentcraft Group teaching and Relaxation Course. Great advances have been made in the numbers of blood tests for ante-natal patients and whereas five years ago many women were con¬ fined who had had neither blood grouping nor haemoglobin tests, it is known that of the confinements which actually took place in Somerset during 1958, at least 87% of the mothers had had their blood group ascer¬ tained. The special blood clinics at Bridgwater, Chard, Crewkerne and