Paediatric aspects of the early discharge of maternity patients.

Abstract

Planned early discharge of mothers and babies from St. Luke's Maternity Hospital, Bradford, has been taking place since 1958. The purpose of this paper is to describe the effect it has had on child health in the city, and, in particular, to consider its safety and acceptability from a paediatric point of view. Theobald (1959, 1962) depicted the form and purpose of the "Bradford experiment," and Douglas et al. ( The results of early discharge elsewhere have been described by Hellman et al. (1962) and Pinker and Fraser (1964).