Growing Into Medicine by Ruth Skrine

Author:Ruth Skrine [Skrine, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781910298374
Publisher: Book Guild Publishing

12

Family Planning Provision and Training

A network of family planning clinics had been started by the National Birth Control Trust, which changed its name to the Family Planning Association in 1939. The sessions were held in premises designated for maternity and child welfare, and owned by local authorities. The FPA fought a fierce battle to get the importance of family planning recognised, but although the NHS had been introduced in 1948 it did not take over the running of the service until twenty-six years later. Doctors were surprisingly uninterested in this vital aspect of health.

From the beginning, owing to the tripartite nature of the NHS, there was a varying degree of rivalry between community services and general practice. I had been lucky to experience friendly relationships on the Isle of Wight, fostered by the medical officer of health. But in other places there was a feeling that clinic doctors were busybodies who created unnecessary extra work for the GP. Certainly, for many years, working for the FPA and in the community service I was not allowed to prescribe anything other than contraceptives. Any patient who was ill had to be referred back to their ‘own’ doctor. This rivalry was not helped when GPs finally agreed to provide family planning in 1975 and were paid on an item for service basis – although they refused to become a source of free condoms.

One GP complained that too many women doctors were being lost to medicine by doing nothing but working in FP clinics, that they had opted out of their duty to heal the sick. In our hearts some of us might have agreed with him, for the choice was, to a degree, a soft option. The volume of knowledge required was manageable; we were spared the responsibility of caring for sick people. Yet I was meeting doctors who had spent their lives in the field and who filled me with awe-struck admiration for their dedication and their understanding of human suffering.

In respect to younger patients the FPA was slow to provide a much-needed service. Until four years before they handed the service over to the NHS the clinics were supposed to ask for proof of marriage or intended marriage. The provision for younger people had been left to the discretion of local FPA committees, some not very liberal. Because of their lack of total commitment, special centres to cater for the needs of the young were opened. These included the 408 centre in Sheffield and a network of Brook clinics. I was sad not to have had the opportunity to do more than occasional sessions with these organisations for I enjoyed the young patients who came to general sessions and believed strongly in the work.

Intercourse with a girl under 16 years old is illegal. Guidelines about protecting her from the results of that action have gone through various forms, influenced by the campaigns by high-profile parents, who have tried to insist that they are always informed when an underage person seeks help.

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