[Report 1965] / Medical Officer of Health, Northumberland County Council.

  • Northumberland (England). County Council.
Date:
1965
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1965] / Medical Officer of Health, Northumberland County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    36/116 (page 34)
    students, in their first year of training, attended a child welfare session whilst those in their third year spent two days paying visits of observation with health visitors and district nurses. Visits of observation were also arranged for student nurses from St. George’s Hospital and the Northgate and District Hospital. Training of Health Visitors Health visitors in Northumberland continued to participate in the practical training of student health visitors from Newcastle upon Tyne and all students spent a period of two weeks gaining rural experience in the county. In September a new course of health visitor training was inaugurated at the Municipal College of Com¬ merce, Newcastle upon Tyne. This coincided with the introduction of the new syllabus of training of the Council for the Training of Health Visitors. In this syllabus considerable emphasis is placed on the need for the student to achieve greater depth in fieldwork experience. To further this end the Council urged local authorities providing practical experience to designate selected health visitors as fieldwork instructors and to arrange for them to attend especially designed courses to prepare them for this work. Four Northumberland health visitors were designated as field¬ work instructors and arrangements were made for three of them to attend appropriate courses. Two students were allocated to each fieldwork instructor whose case-loads were reduced in accord¬ ance with the recommendations of the Council. Students now spend one third of their total training in the practical work field and every effort is made to link this aspect of their training with the theoretical work. Regular contact is maintained between the tutorial staff of the school and the fieldwork instructors, the latter paying periodic visits to the school for discussion with both tutors and students and the former paying visits to the practical work training centres. There is every indication that students under¬ taking this revised form of practical training will emerge better equipped for their future work than was the case previously. In addition to these students, arrangements were made for student health visitors from the University of London Institute of Education, the University of Liverpool and the Battersea College of Technology to receive practical experience of county health visiting. Health Visiting The testing of all infants for phenylketonuria and for the detection of deafness is now an established routine. No cases of phenylketonuria were found during the year but a total of 34 infants and two year olds were referred for further investigation having failed the hearing tests carried out by the health visitors.