Private hospitals have been unable to capitalise on the inclusion of specialist nurses on the government’s critical skills list as red tape has made it virtually impossible for them to recruit overseas.
Private hospital confront a growing shortage of specialist nurses, as the output of SA’s training institutions has failed to keep pace with rising demand driven by population growth and a worsening disease burden. Mediclinic, for instance, has a 30% vacancy rate in its specialist units, which include ICU, theatre and emergency care.
At issue are qualifications required of foreign-trained nurses by the statutory body charged with overseeing the profession, the SA Nursing Council (SANC). In a sharp departure from the past, it now requires all foreign-trained nurses who want to work in specialist units to have a postgraduate specialist qualification, in line with a new qualifications system introduced in 2020.
That means private hospitals can no longer hire nurses readily for their specialist units from India, the key market from which they recruited in the past, because their qualifications don’t align with SANC requirements. Most nurses working in specialist units in India have a basic qualification and acquire their niche skills on the job.
“The critical skills list doesn’t help us at all, because we can’t bring in any nurses. It is extremely frustrating,” said Life Healthcare’s chief nurse officer, Merle Victor. The company had vacancies for 855 specialist nurses, and while it recruited fewer than 100 from India every specialist nurse had an effect, she said.
Mediclinic nursing executive Hendrica Ngoepe said the company had 672 vacant posts for specialist nurses in its theatre, ICU and emergency units, representing a 30% vacancy rate. It recruited more than 300 nurses from India to work in these units over the past 15 years.
“We were looking forward to hiring another 186 to close the gaps. But looking at the conditions attached to the scarce skills list it is not going to be easy to recruit from India,” she said. Mediclinic had recruited foreign staff primarily from India as they were trained to high standards and fit in easily, she said.
“We have a crisis. It is a huge challenge for the country as a whole,” she said.
While hiring staff from overseas offered a short-term fix for SA’s nursing crisis, the long-term solution required increasing the output of SA’s training institutions, which have seen the throughput of specialist nurses slow to a trickle, said Ngoepe.
As Business Day reported earlier this week, the key impediment to training specialist nurses is the limit SANC has placed on the number of places allocated to accredited nursing education institutions.
SANC acting registrar and CEO Jeanneth Nxumalo said the council had to apply the same criteria to all nurses who wished to work in SA, hence the requirement that nurses recruited from India to work in specialist units have a postgraduate specialist qualification.
“The SANC has never registered an Indian nurse to work as a specialist nurse when (they do not) have the necessary qualifications. The nurses from India have always been registered as general nurses and midwives (where a nurse has a midwifery qualification). The SANC is not aware that such nurses were working as specialist nurses in the clinical facilities,” she said.
The Hospital Association of SA (HASA), which represents private hospitals, has raised the industry’s concern about the staffing crisis and appealed to the SANC to let them train more nurses.
It has also highlighted the problems created by a new requirement that all students must have a midwifery qualification before they can enrol in postgraduate specialist programmes. Many nurses who trained under programmes that have now been discontinued do not have midwifery qualifications. “SANC indicated they will deliberate internally and revert in the new year. Hasa awaits that process,” said Hasa CEO Dumisani Bomela.
The SANC said all specialist nurses should have midwifery qualifications as they will encounter pregnant women or women of childbearing age, regardless of their focus area.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.