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BusinessLive reports that according to a study conducted at a large public hospital in Johannesburg, SA’s nurses were overworked, overwhelmed, and drowning in debt even before the Covid-19 pandemic struck.
The International Council on Nursing issued a warning last month about the increased stress and anxiety facing nursing staff in the face of the highly contagious Covid-19 virus, which has created a host of new demands on front-line workers. These pressures come on top of the already stressful lives of SA’s nurses. The study, published in the Public Library of Science, found the dependency ratio for nurses was more than three times higher than it is for the average earner in SA. The dependency ratio measures how many people an individual supports. For SA nurses in the study, it was 5.24, while the average dependency ratio for earners in SA is 1.55. Only two of the 71 nurses who took part in the study were debt-free. On average, debt payments took up a quarter of nurses’ net take-home pay. Their gross monthly salaries ranged between R33,600 and R9,000 depending on their qualifications and experience; after deductions, such as tax, medical aid and union fees, their net take-home pay ranged between R22,000 and R7,500 a month. The study also highlighted an exhausting treadmill for many nurses, with little respite from caring for others and domestic responsibilities.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Tamar Kahn at BusinessLive
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