Cape Town - On Friday, 11 January 2019, Western Cape Minister of Health, Dr Nomafrench Mbombo, welcomed the new intake of medical interns at New Somerset Hospital. These junior doctors have qualified and are now doing their two-year internship at public health facilities across the Province.
“I would like to welcome these junior doctors into the health system into the Western Cape. The interns are from across the country and have been placed in our system to help them gain the necessary experience to be able to add value to the public health system.
I want to encourage them to work hard, be 100% dedicated, and make use of every single teachable moment they will get while on this platform,” said MEC Mbombo.
New Somerset Hospital welcomed 25 new medical interns for 2019 of a total of 333 interns were allocated to the Province. In addition to the new intakes, NSH has 12 2nd year interns which totals to 36 medical interns in total.
In total the Western Cape has about 500 medical interns across the service platform inclusive of those that are in their second year of internship.
The purpose of internship is to provide well rounded, patient-centred, team based, practical work experience to these junior doctors. They develop the practical skills to go with the theoretical base they already have under supervision and mentorship of more senior and experienced teams.
Dr Engelbrecht, Head of Health adds: “We encourage our new interns to grab this opportunity to learn as much as possible - also from the experienced nurses they work with; especially as they work with qualified midwives, intensive care-, trauma nurses and pediatric nurses, and at clinics with clinical nurse practitioners.
"We hope that these new interns make the best of their learning opportunities and that they can get the very best out of the two years before becoming safe and caring, well-trained doctors”.