Youths Help Out Hospital
TRACY VAUGHAN
“I like hospitals, and I think I want to
be a nurse. I worked as a junior
volunteer this summer because I
thought it would give me a good idea of
what nursing is all about," said
14-year-old Debra Nelson who helped
out on Hanes Ward during her summer
vacation.
“I'm planning to be a pediatrician
because I enjoy children, ” said Martha
Burton, a 16-year-old who spent time
on Howland Ward from June through
August. "It was the third year I’ve been
a candy striper," she added.
Marty Scruggs, one of four boys in
the Junior Volunteer Program
sponsored by the Hospital Auxiliary
during 1974, said the work was “fun
and good exercise” and admitted, “I
need the exercise.” He served as a
guide for patients in the surgical
clinics, escorting them to other clinics
and generally aiding them in finding
their way around a large hospital.
And Rorie Craig, praised by post
office staff members for his diligent
assistance with patient mail, said he
really didn’t know why he decided to t>e
a junior volunteer.
This summer, like previous summers
since 1950, young people from the
Durham area have given their time at
Duke without pay to help others in time
of sickness. They've made beds, run
errands, served coffee and sandwiches
(Continued on page 2)
CAROL ANNE ROBINS
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VOLUME 21, NUMBER 34
SEPTEMBER 13,1974
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
China Answer to Health Care Needs
Arena Lauds 'Barefoot Doctors’
CAPPED IN TRADITION—Duke
Chapel is the traditional setting for the
annual School of Nursing
Committment Service for juniors.
Junior Nurses
Receive Caps
Repeating the historic Florence
Nightingale pledge “to practice my
profession faithfully,” 93 junior nursing
students recently gave their
committment to nursing vocally and
symbolically as each received the
traditional Duke nursing cap or
emblem.
The Duke tradition, in which the
nursing cap is awarded to those
students who have successfully
completed two years of work in the
School of Nursing, began in 1931. The
cap marks the beginning of the
students’ remaining two years of
clinical training in the school.
Each of the 92 female class members
were presented caps by their big
sisters in the senior class. The only
male class memtjer, Glenn Thomas
DeMaria, received the school’s nursing
insignia patch to be worn on the left
shoulder of his uniform.
The committment service was
prefaced by an invocation by Duke
minister Rev. Robert T. Young and an
address to the students by Dr. Terry W.
Johnson, professor of Botany.
A medical center professor has
returned from China with a proposal
that could take the sting out of the
doctor shortage in North Carolna’s
isolated rural townships.
That proposal, according to Dr. Jay
M. Arena, calls for Chinese-style
“barefoot doctors”—laymen ti'ained to
diagnose simple illnesses, give
immunizations and instruct their
neighk)ors in basic nutrition, personal
hygiene and sanitation.
Arena, a professor of pediatrics and a
past president of the American
Academy of Pediatrics, spent most of
July visiting medical facilities in the
People’s Republic of China. He was the
only pediatrician invited to join an
American Medical Association
delegation of 16 people. irK:luding
newspaper columnist Ann Landers.
The group toured eight eastern
cities, concentrating on communes,-
hospitals, factory and neighlwrhood
clinics, medical schools and research
institutes.
China can boast of several health
"pluses,” Arena reported;
•Family planning is practiced alnrost
universally and parents now seldom
decide to have more than two children.
•Malnutrition and poisonings among
children are rare.
*At least 90 per cent of Chinese
babies are breast fed-up to age two in
rural communities.
•Syphilis among newt)orns has been
wiped out.
•Tuberculosis and smallpox have
been virtually eradicated, since most
children are immunized against them at
birth.
•Only two to three per cent of Chinese
babies are born prematurely—the U.S.
figure is five per cent.
•Child abuse is unheard of.
But the most impressive “plus" is the
country's network of 1.25 million
medics affectionately called “barefoot
doctors" by the people they serve, said
the Duke specialist.
"They're neither barefoot nor
doctors.” Arena noted. “Their formal
training may be from three months to a
year. They were in the communes.
fields and factories, working alongside
their comrades, and in spare hours,
were instructing them in basic hygiene
and sanitation.”
The medics also immunized infants
and children against diphtheria,
whooping cough, tetanus, polio and
even measles, as well as tufcierculosis
and smallpox, he recalled.
“For the first time in ChinjI. people
are being looked at and listened to" by
medical personnel throughout the
nation, said the doctor. He explained
that the “barefoot doctors” responsible
for the turn-around in China's health
care are chosen from among commune
workers and remain on their
communes after training.
The brightest of them are later
chosen to receive more education. The
vast majority of China’s current medical
students began their careers as
“barefoot doctors,” he said.
A similar pool of local medics could
work in the regions of North Carolina
where the health manpower shortage
is “very acute.” Arena suggested.
James D. Bernstein, the state's chief
of rural health services, calculates that
30 rural counties in North Carolina
have more than 4.000 residents for
each of their family physicians,
internists and pediatricians—a ratio
Bernstein calls “critical.”
Caswell County, in the north-central
section of the state, has only one
full-time physician for its 1S.000
citizens. And just one doctor is
practicing in Greene County, with
15.000 residents, in the state's
east-central region.
In areas like these, laymen such as
housewives, teachers or policemen
could t>e trained at state expense to
augment the work of health
professionals miles away. Arena said.
He hurried to add that “barefoot
doctors" in North Carolina could be
successful only “if they were allied with
a physician or a medical center they
could refer patients to.”
Training local residents would put at
least minimal care within reach of
disheartened communities unable to
attract their own doctors, Arena added,
since those residents “would t)e happy
to work where they were born and
raised.'
p^ s
"WELCOME, DR. ARENA"—Xi\a!t was th^ greeting waiting for Duke's Dr. Jay M.
Arena (center] as he arrived at the Children's Hospital in Shanghai during a
three-week visit to the People's Republic of China in July. Arena, a professor of
pediatrics and a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, was one
of 16 American Medical Association delegates invited to tour medical facilities in
the land of Mao.