Close Links In Treatment

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31087, 16 June 1966, Page 2

Close Links In Treatment

The Nurse Maude District Nursing Association was an organisation which remained free from the bureaucratic tangle which so often enmeshed public services in this day and age, and allowed an even closer tie to exist between doctor, patient, and staff, said the president of the Canterbury division of the British Medical Association, Dr. W. H. Brockett, in the annual report port of the Nurse Maude Association. "The doctor remains in charge of his case, knowing that ho has only to ask for assistance with treatment and

care. When he does so, he can then depend on the fact that all toe resources of the lady superintendent and her staff will be thrown into toe battle,” he said. “At this stag® he has no further worry for he knows that his patient is being cared for with all the technical sfcilt, loyalty, and devotion that can be mustered. The patient, too, soon realises that the nursing service provides not only efficient nursnig treatments, but also that little extra personal interest which means so much when one is not well.”

The service was an indispensable factor and an integral part in the ever-increas-ing demand for domiciliary

care of the sick. In addition to its routine care and treatment, it provided a far greater service in the field of patient welfare, he said. •While we have this marvellous service, we can look forward to further moreembracing care for toe sick and help for our ourselves, thus leaving our already strained hospitals and staffs to cope with toe serious cases and medical urgencies to the point where the private practitioner, either specialist or general, may again assume the responsibility for his patient, in the familiar surroundings and atmosphere of the patient’s own home,” said Dr. Brockett.

The lady superintendent. Miss M. E. Rae, reported that there had been further expansion in the work of alt branches of the associationdistrict nursing, home aid, laundry and social services. Nursing treatments in homes in toe city, suburbs, and country areas totalled 94,143—an average of 790 patients received treatment each month.

One section of the home aid service required special thought and planning for the provision of assistance for the young mother attending a day clinic for psychiatric treatment, said Miss Rae. The 196 home aids made 34,104 visits and worked 111,895 hours.