DISTRICT NURSES

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 22, 26 July 1945, Page 5

DISTRICT NURSES

EXTENSION OF SERVICE

DISCUSSION IN HOUSE

Advantages they claimed would accrue from an extension of the district nursing service, particularly in country areas, were put forward by Opposition and Government members in the House of Representatives yesterday afternoon when consideration was given to the Social Security (District Nursing Services) Regulations, 1944. . The Minister of Health (Mr. Nordmeyer) gav,e the assurance that it was the Government's intention to extend the service. As an indication of that desire, he said, there was the fact that the Government was today for ah practical purposes meeting 100 per cent, of the cost.

The Minister said he wanted to I sound a note of warning, however. There was a disposition in some districts to regard the district nurse as being just as good as the doctor. While admittedly a good district nurse was better than a bad doctor, the plain fact of the matter was that it would ] be, a second-rate service to provide a district nursing service instead of a medical service. The district nursing service must be complementary to and not in substitution of\ medical services. He realised, however, that m many districts in existing circumstances it was not possible to have a medical man, and if they could ap-, point a district nurse it would be their' privilege to do so. Among the points made by members were that the presence of a district nurse in backblock areas might be the means of saving life, that such a service would save the time of doctors, and would enable more patients to be nursed in their homes with a consequent reduction in the number of hospital patients and a saving to the Social Security Fund. Mr W. T. Anderton (Government, Eden) said he believed that the extension of nursLig districts, even where medical men were practising, would be the means of saving the Social Security Fund hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. TBVIE FOR OVERHAUL. After six years of intensive trial and practice nnder social security he thought the time- had arrived when there should be some reorganisation and reorientation of the whole scheme. Rather than progress he was sorry to say that in some respects *he thought there had been retrogression. There was an inclination to back curative medicine rather than preventive medicine. The Minister of Health said that while some hospital boards had awakened to their responsibilities and privileges and had appointed even now all the district nurses they were likely to require, others had. not yet awakened to their responsibilities. That was partly due to the fact that district nurses were in short supply and it was not possible . to provide them in every district where boards would like them to be, but in many cases it was due to some reluctance, which he found difficult to understand, to utilise to the full the services !of nurses. He agreed that if these ! nurses were used more extensively ! than in the past that would minimise the work of doctors and the demand for in-patient hospital attention.