[Report 1920] / School Medical Officer of Health, Berkshire County Council.

  • Berkshire (England). County Council.
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1920] / School Medical Officer of Health, Berkshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/20 (page 4)
    Medical Inspection. Medical inspection was carried out during the year in all but 23 of the elementary schools, and 40 of the schools were inspected a second time. The omission was in most instances due to the allocation of a definite area to each Assistant School Medical Officer and in the remainder to closure for infectious disease at the time arranged for Medical Inspection. In every school visited entrants, leavers, children aged 8 years and special cases were examined. It is now practicable for each Assistant School Medical Officer to adhere strictly to a definite group of schools, and one day a week is set aside for re-inspections. The Assistant School Medical Officers carry out all routine medical inspections and devote one day each week to the re-inspection of children needing to be kept under observation or previously recommended for treatment. They also examine candidates for County Scholarships and for posts as Pupil Teachers and all children under 14 years of age who apply for permission to take up part-time employment. The last mentioned work is difficult to arrange, owing to the scattered distribution of applicants, and occasional delay in settling a time and place for the examination is inevitable. At the end of each week an informal meeting of School Medical Officers and School Nurses is held at my office to discuss the work and arrange a time table for the ensuing week. The duties of the School Nurses include periodic inspection of all children in school with a view to promoting general cleanliness and detecting affections such as ringworm and itch, home visits to follow up children recommended for treatment, and children excluded from school for unclean- liness and skin disease. An important section of the work comprises preparation of the lists of children with defective vision, visits to the parents to urge attendance at the eye clinics, arrangements for the administration of atropine pieliminary to examination, attendance at the eye clinics, measuring for spectacle frames and subsequent revisits to the homes to deliver the glasses and obtain payment for them and to see that they fit correctly. Incidentally a large number of visits are paid to the schools and homes at the recpiest of the School Teachers and School Attendance Officers. Throughout the year a high standard of work has been maintained by the Assistant School Medical Officers and the School Nurses, and I find that the help thus given is thoroughly appreciated by Teachers and other people intimately associated with the schools.