'Include doctors, nurses in critical skills list': Hospital Association

The Hospital Association of SA says the country is not doing enough to train doctors and nurses to overcome the “dire” shortage of medical skills.

“As recently as January 26 this year, in our presentation on the proposed national health insurance to the parliamentary committee for health, we made it clear how far behind we are in terms of medical skills available and how stalled our production of these skills has become over the years,” said the association’s CEO Dr Dumisani Bomela.

He said the association, which represents most private hospitals in the country, was shocked that medical skills were not included in the recently released critical skills list.

Hasa said that in its presentation to the committee it pointed to OECD statistics that showed SA lags a basket of comparative countries for nurse and doctor numbers per 1,000 inhabitants, with ratios of 1.3 (Turkey 2.1; Russia 8.1; Norway 17.8) and 0.8 (Turkey 1.9; New Zealand 3.3; Austria 5.2) respectively.

In the category “active medical schools per million inhabitants”, SA’s ratio of 0.16 similarly lags countries like Libya (1.88), Brazil (1.50), and Colombia (1.15).

 “Leaving out skills previously included on the critical skills list sends the message that we have overcome the problem we had — but that is simply not the case.

“It cannot be, as the nursing profession has already long struggled to attract new recruits, a situation that is exacerbated by the amendments to the nurse training curriculum and the accreditation of training facilities that has stalled the numbers of new nurses being trained — in a moment when a significant number of nurses in the profession are already over 50 and will be retiring soon,” Bomela said.

He said it was difficult to reconcile the projection that by 2025 SA would have a shortage of 34,000 nurses.

According to Bomela, the shortage of nurses and doctors and the slow development of medical skills pose serious questions for healthcare delivery now and in the future under the proposed universal healthcare service system.

“If anything, in the first two waves of Covid-19 when medical staff were laid low through infections, we came to see very clearly how threadbare our human resources for health are and how vulnerable these shortages make the healthcare system. Nor, frankly, was the vaccine drive left unaffected by the shortage of medical staff — as we know, the vaccine rollout slowed to a trickle at times because of staff shortages.

“Our national situation is clear: we are not training enough medical practitioners to overcome the existing dire shortages in doctors and nurses in general, and particularly among specialists and nurses with specialist skills.

“Already, medical facilities are struggling to fill posts.  With the shortage in this country, the association has had to lobby the government to enable members to recruit nurses with specialist skills from overseas.”

He said the specialist skills in the medical fraternity were in such short supply that waiting lists were lengthening beyond months and into years.

“We must continue to use the critical skills list as an immediate solution to an existing acute problem,” Bomela said.

“The Hospital Association and its members call on the government, in particular the department of home affairs, to amend the critical skills list to include medical skills required not only to facilitate critical care, but also to pave the way for the efficient operation of the public health system which is the bedrock of the proposed universal healthcare system.”

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