Pretoria - By closing nursing schools, the government contributed largely to the mass production of inadequately skilled and unqualified nurses in the country.
This led to a sharp drop in the standards of nursing as it opened a gap from which unscrupulous colleges and bogus training institutes mushroomed.
The result was that the country was robbed and thousands of nursing hopefuls duped.
“When the current government took over it dismantled all things good,” said nurse and chief executive officer of Jubilee Hospital in Hammanskraal, Tiny Magano.
She lamented the closure of the nursing colleges attached to academic hospitals. Magano said these produced the ultimate nursing professionals.
In Pretoria, the colleges were attached to Kalafong, the old HF Verwoed, as well as Dr George Mukhari hospitals.
“These academic facilities gave nursing students the most prolific experience needed to become an effective nurse,” retired nurse Jasmine Sehoole said.
Sehoole said the schools allowed quick integration of students into the real world of hospital work, getting them to see and experience health care delivery through their four years as students.
“That calibre of nurses was so qualified that it was poached by neighbouring and overseas counties (which) offered good working conditions and better pay.
She and many others had resisted the temptation of a better life in favour of the provision of services to their own people.
In recognition of the failure to produce qualified nursing staff due to the closure of government training institutions, President Jacob Zuma made an undertaking to revitalise 105 colleges countrywide in his 2011 State of the Nation Address. He committed funds and promised to train more nurses to fill the gaping posts.
“But nothing has come of this,” the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa president Simon Hlungwani said.
He said the closures had led to the decline in the intake of nurses and the remaining numbers failed to meet the growing population. Then private nursing schools started mushrooming everywhere, attracting the vulnerable nursing wannabes. “They fell prey to two phenomena - bogus colleges and legitimate institutions run as businesses,” said Hlungwani.
Bogus colleges offered all manner of courses, most extremely short, and produced nurses who couldn't be registered and who could get no work despite paying a lot of money for training. The second lot were sucked in by businesses with no interest in health care.
“All these contributed to the challenges in the health care system, the multiple effects being the drop in standard, attitude problems and others,” Hlungwani added.
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Pretoria News