Today's Labour News

BL Premium reports that SA’s pipeline for training specialist nurses has been virtually throttled by the government’s botched transition to new qualifications.

This has been revealed by data published by the SA Nursing Council (SANC). The situation heralds a deepening crisis for public and private hospitals, which have for more than a decade battled to recruit specialist nurses in areas such as intensive and emergency care and oncology. The situation is so grave that the government has sought to bolster numbers by including specialist nurses on its scarce skills list, a mechanism intended to smooth the way for employers to hire foreign nationals. According to SANC data, universities and public nursing colleges have been given the go-ahead to train only 70 nurses seeking postgraduate qualifications in emergency care this year, along with 80 for oncology, fewer than 200 for critical care, and just 265 for midwifery. This is despite SA’s massive trauma burden and high maternal and infant mortality rates. Only 15 places are available to train nurses who want to specialise in critical care for children, 46 for nephrology and 80 for mental health. No nurses at all will receive specialist postgraduate training in the Eastern Cape this year. These low numbers come after a two-year hiatus in the training of specialist nurses under the new qualifications, a plan that was supposed to kick off in 2020. The government’s decision to introduce new qualifications in 2020 meant nursing education institutions had to acquire fresh accreditation from multiple bodies before they could begin training specialist nurses on the new curriculum. But red tape stymied their plans to such an extent that no new students could begin specialist nursing training in 2020 and 2021.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Tamar Kahn at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)

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