Financial Mail and Business Day

Council ‘worsens shortage of nurses’

• Private hospitals can train more students but is bridled by SA Nursing Council, delegates told

Tamar Kahn Health & Science Writer

The SA Nursing Council (SANC) is blocking the training of new nurses by preventing private hospitals from taking on more students, delegates to the annual Hospital Association of SA (Hasa) conference heard on Tuesday.

SA has an acute shortage of healthcare professionals, but private hospitals are particularly frustrated by the nursing shortage as they are well placed to help fix the problem.

The SANC’s restriction on the number of training places offered by private hospitals is undermining a Hasa proposal tabled at the Presidential Jobs Summit in 2018 that the private sector train 50,000 nurses to help tackle SA’s critical shortage of healthcare professionals.

Hasa is SA’s key industry association for private hospitals and counts SA’s three biggest hospital groups — Netcare, Mediclinic and Life Healthcare — among its members.

The proposal was endorsed by the presidential health social compact the following year, but appears stymied by the SANC, which determines how many places may be offered by training institutions.

SA’s nine provincial colleges train about three-quarters of SA’s nurses, with the rest trained at universities, technikons and private nursing colleges.

Private hospital groups such as Netcare previously played a significant role, but several years ago had their annual intake slashed by the SANC, with no rationale given for the change, said Netcare nursing education executive Toy Vermaak.

“We used to qualify 500 [a year]. Now if we do 80, it’s a lot,” she said.

Netcare had received 23,000 applications for 130 training places, demonstrating the immense interest in pursuing a career in nursing, she said.

The SANC is a statutory council and operates independently from the health department, which has no direct influence over how it manages its affairs, said health deputy director-general for National Health Insurance (NHI) Nicholas Crisp. The shortage of nurses in public hospitals and clinics is largely due to budget constraints,

which limit the number of posts provincial health departments can fill, he said.

The health budget is under immense pressure, and provinces have been unable to retain the 20,000 additional healthcare workers hired during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, he said.

The SANC said it was unable to meet Business Day’s deadline and would respond at a later stage.

SA has a massive shortage of nurses, particularly in clinical specialities such as surgery and intensive care, said Netcare’s director for human resources and transformation, Nceba Ndzwayiba.

“Covid-19 exposed the magnitude of what we are dealing with in SA — the skills were just unavailable. We had to take workers from one province to another and try to follow the wave [of infections].

“This [showed] us the urgency to produce a pipeline to meet current and future demand, and ensure NHI will be adequately resourced,” he said.

Estimates vary, but by every account, SA is desperately short of nurses. The health department’s human resources strategy for 2030 projects that by 2025, there will be a shortage of 34,000 registered nurses in primary healthcare alone, while Hasa estimated the nursing gap at between 21,000 and 61,000, he said.

SA’s shortage of professionals is steadily getting worse, as the pool of healthcare workers per capita is shrinking even as the demand for services grows. Population growth, an ageing population and a growing burden of disease are all putting more pressure on the limited resources available, said Shivani Ranchod, a co-founder of consultancy Percept.

The percentage of the population aged 50 or above is projected to rise from 18% in 2020 to 26% in 2040, accompanied by a growing prevalence in noncommunicable diseases.

Hypertension, a significant risk factor for non-communicable diseases, is projected to rise from 14.2-million affected adults over the age of 20 in 2019 (38% of the adult population) to 21.6million by 2040 (43%), according to Percept’s modelling.

Percept’s analysis of public and private sector records, including the government’s payroll system and medical scheme data, indicates there are fewer than 10,000 full-time equivalent specialists practising in SA, said Ranchod.

RESTRICTION ON THE NUMBER OF TRAINING PLACES OFFERED BY PRIVATE HOSPITALS IS UNDERMINING A PROPOSAL TABLED AT THE JOBS SUMMIT

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2022-08-03T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-03T07:00:00.0000000Z

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