The Pioneering Doctor Who Revolutionised Home Care

On 5th July 2023, it will be 75 years since the National Health Service was first established and revolutionised healthcare in the UK in the process. However, 1948 was also a groundbreaking year for social care.

The National Assistance Act 1948 finally abolished the antiquated Poor Law system that dated back to the Tudors and implemented an obligation for local authorities to take care of people who were elderly, disabled or homeless.

However, five years before this, a pioneering doctor who established the importance of specialist care for people as they aged and developed different care needs.

The late Marjory Warren (1897-1960) initially wanted to become a surgeon but as her career progressed she focused on medical administration and medicine in a Great Britain before the NHS.

She would be among the first medical professionals to develop a system of classification to determine the care needs of different patients after finding patients with dementia and other needs that would be best treated in residential care, on the same general wards as women giving birth.

This would prompt her to write two medical papers calling for the recognition of what would become known as geriatric medicine and the need for specialist care for elderly patients with specialists in that field. The first would appear in the British Medical Journal in 1943.

After the second, which would appear in The Lancet, she would openly advocate for a specialist care unit to provide care for people with chronic health conditions, both in hospitals, in specialist residential care homes and in-home care services.

Her approach was one of the first to prioritise adjustments, the retention of independence for the patient and reduced medical disability as much as possible, which garnered her international attention and praise as her proposals were put into action.

Tragically she died in 1960 following a car accident on the way to a conference.

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