[Report 1966] / Medical Officer of Health, County of Zetland (Shetland Islands).

  • Shetland (Scotland). County Council.
Date:
1966
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1966] / Medical Officer of Health, County of Zetland (Shetland Islands). Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/33 (page 4)
    the year 58 expectant mothers, 106 nursing mothers and 211 pre-school children were given dental treatment by the School Dental Officers. NURSERY AND CHILD MINDERS REGULATION ACT There are 2 persons registered as Child Minders under the terms of the Act. MIDWIFERY During 1966 there were 252 confinements in hospital and 14- confinements at home. Expressed as a percentage this means that 94% of all confinements occurred in hospital. This approximates to the figures for the rest of the area of the North-Eastern Regional Hospital Board. No cases of puerperal fever occurred during the year. 19 midwives notified their intention to practise midwifery in the county. Eight of our District Nurse/Midwives are qualified to administer gas and oxygen analgesia. Maternity outfits are supplied free of charge to expectant mothers confined in their homes. Statistics about mother and child welfare and maternity services are given on page 9 of the Appendix to this report. HEALTH VISITING AND HOME NTJRSING- The Public Health Department's nursing staff consists of a Nursing Superintendent and twenty two nurses. One of those nurses is a whole-time health visitor, the remainder are district nurses who also act as Health Visitors. Six members of our nursing staff hold the Health Visitors Certificate. Recruitment to the service has been sluggish, there is an overall shortage of nurses and this is related in part to an increased demand for nurses within all branches of the health service and this coupled with the fact that many careers other than nursing are now available to girls increases the difficulty. The staffing of those islands in which there is no resident doctor has caused us particular concern. Buch a post requires a nurse of high quality, she must be able and self sufficient. Every effort should be made to render such posts attractive and adequate reward made to those nurses for the heavy and unique responsibilities which they carry. A total of 18,240 visits were paid by the District Nurses as Health Visitors and by the Lerwick Health Visitor to 2,898 cases. These visits included 1,663 visits to 231 expectant mothers, 2,131 visits to 255 children born in 1966, 4,319 visits to 534 persons over 65 and 610 visits to 57 tuberculous families. During 1966 a total of 33,902 home nursing visits were made by the District Nurses to a total of 1,948 persons. 15,099 of these visits were to 577 people over 65. One nurse commenced training for the combined Queen's Nurse/ Health Visitor course in Edinburgh whilst 4 District Nurses attended midwifery/