PANEL DISCUSSION:
The second and last day of the SANC Nursing Indaba 2023 has commences at the Birchwood Hotel in Boksburg.
The second session is comprised of a panel discussion, made up of SANC Council members, on a number of areas in nursing.
The Panel is fielding questions from the floor.
Some of the questions include:
Given the fact that the country is nearer to the implementation of the NHI, which is the re-engineering of the primary healthcare for the country, what is the Council’s intention in as far as the regulation of the new healthcare cadre, the community health workers, who essentially are an extension of the nurses and their scope plays the assisting role to nurses.
SANC Chairperson, Dr Moshibudi Molepo says the health councils in South Africa have looked at the matter of the community health workers, who trade unions representatives presented at the 2nd Presidential Health Summit to be around 90 000 in the country.
But the dilemma that the councils are faced with in as far as accomodating them is that they education has not been regulated by any of them prior to them undergoing it.
Dr Molepo says it is a challenge foe the Council to take to its fold a cadre whose production has not been according to its own regulation and would now be expected to regulate them.
On the shortage of nurses, midwives and nurse specialists, the question was asked on whether the council cannot ensure more production of nurses and nurse specialists.
Dr Molepo says it is not that the Council is not aware of the low numbers that the NEIs are producing, but as the regulator the onus is on the Nursing Education Institutions (NEIs) to propose the increased intake of the students, but that increase must take into consideration the proper balance between theoretical and practical input that the student must be exposed to. In other words, there will be a disjuncture if the NEI proposes to take this number of students, but does not give the number of institutions that the students will be exposed to for their practicals and this where the council, as the regulatory, will come in bring the NEIA back to within a realistic students and practical opportunity in clinical settings.
In the case of the private institutions, this reality must be looked into.
The Council says all it asks itself is, will the nurse that is produced by such a system that lacks resources, be a safe nurse to the community.
The Indaba continues…
