[Report 1970] / Medical Officer of Health, Aberdeen City.

  • Aberdeen (Scotland). City Council.
Date:
1970
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1970] / Medical Officer of Health, Aberdeen City. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    89/186 (page 67)
    The Position in 1970. In 1970 and indeed 1969 and 1968 the position can be briefly summarised. (1) For any sustained further investigation of accidents or any substantial increases of work on accident prevention additional staff — especially health education lecturers and health visitors—would be needed: and we have had some years of financial stringency in which staff increases were avoided. (2) Since the Director of Advanced Nursing Education (Miss Lamont) and the Principal Health Visitor Tutor (Miss Hay) were themselves personally involved in the home safety efforts of earlier years, it is unlikely that student health visitors, student male visiting officers and student health assistants are inadequately taught about their important roles in the prevention or reduction of accidents. (3) Since the Medical Officer of Health and the Chief Nursing Officer (Miss Nairn) had likewise been personally involved, it is unlikely that health visitors and male health visiting officers are discouraged from educating their clients about safety; but the health visitors and male health visiting officers have (without increase in their numbers) to allocate priorities—e.g. between maintenance of emotional and physical health in an increasing elderly population, persuasion of young mothers about family spacing, improvement of emotional health of preschool and school children, convincing parents of the importance of vaccination against rubella and measles, and guidance about safety. (4) Since group health education has been enormously extended in recent years and since it is directed by the persons mentioned at the beginning of para- graph (2) above, it is unlikely that reasonable teaching is not given on safety—but, as in the case of individual guidance by health visitors in the home, teaching on safety has to compete with other health education priorities. (5) The Health Education Division from time to time produce exhibitions featuring home, road and water safety—but again there has to be due consideration to other priorities. (6) A group who might aid health visitors and male health visiting officers in safety counselling is district nurses, but over the years they have displayed so little interest in the subject that the Medical Officer of Health has in the last two years not given student district nurses the single talk on safety work that he previously offered. The lack of interest is in no way the fault of the nurses; they are in a separate organisation, spend their lives on treatment and have no linkage with the mainstream of health education and disease prevention. (7) Consequently, senior members of staff of the Health Department, while a little sceptical about the value of mass media by themselves (as opposed to the unquestioned value of mass media when combined with individual group teaching), have felt in recent years that— until staff increases become practicable—the best