The Nelson Mandela Children's Hospital celebrates one year. Meet the team behind the success:
Jayson Gopiechand,
nursing director
A patient’s well-being is
determined by the quality
of care they receive from
nurses, who play an integral
role regarding patient outcomes
and the experience of
a health facility.
This is according to the
nursing director at Nelson
Mandela Children’s Hospital
(NMCH), Jayson Gopiechand,
who qualified as a nurse in
2005 and now marshals over
120 caregivers.
Gopiechand said the hospital’s
nurses were equipped
with the ethos of child and
family-centred care, asserting
that all his team members
were competent to carry out
NMCH’s specialised care.
“Nurses define a country’s
health status. When it comes
to nursing, you are with the
patient 24/7.
“Nurses have the most
patient experience from the
admission to the discharge
phase,” Gopiechand said.
“Being a new institution,
our challenges are quite limiting
at this point in time.
“When it comes to nursing
competence, this is not a real
challenge for me at this point
in time. The challenge lies in
maintaining our competency
standards and maintaining
our ethos for quality.
“We are always directing
our attention and resources
at upskilling our staff,”
Gopiechand added.
He said the hospital was
still looking to recruit more
nurses, even though there
was a shortage in the country
and the hospital would
upskill them to meet specialised
levels.
“We are not saying that we
are only looking for experienced
or trained nurses. We
will look for nurses on the
basis of job fit; does the person
love working with children?
“We have to look at these
things – paediatric nursing is
a skill in itself.
“We want our nurses to
show care; when you are at
the bedside, you can showcase
that care and concern,
including involving the
family in the decision-making
processes,” Gopiechand said.
Dr Porai Moshesh,
paediatrics ICU head
“The day you stop being
sorrowful and stop hurting
after a child’s death,
you should pack your bags
and leave because you don’t
belong in paediatrics.”
These are the views of
the paediatric
intensivist who heads
NMCH’s ICU.
Moshesh, who has been a
paediatrician since 2010 and
an intensivist since 2012, said
she oversees two senior doctors
in her unit as well as
about five junior doctors who
provide care to critical children,
and those who need life
support.
Moshesh said while the
unit did achieve good outcomes,
child death was an
unfortunate part of the job.
She said people should
remember that health workers
were not superheroes,
and that when children sadly
died, it would be after the ICU
staff at NMCH had given the
child “the best care possible”.
“When a child dies in ICU,
it is very heartbreaking. It
breaks people’s spirit and
morale.
“After every death, we
sit down as a team and we
debrief. We also call all the
nurses to come down because
the nurses take it very hard,”
Moshesh said.
She added that her love of
children began as a schoolgirl
in Mthatha in the Eastern
Cape, where she used to
collect and walk with school
learners who were six or
seven years her junior, as
they all went to a Roman
Catholic school far from their
neighbourhood.
“I love children. I love
their resilience and how
almost nothing breaks children
down, except when
adults break them down.
“Children are also so
rewarding when they get better,”
she enthused
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Dr Hopewell Ntsinjana, Head of Cardiology
A heart centre which
links basic scientists with
clinicians to run cutting-edge
research and address the
heavy backlog of surgeries is
on the horizon.
This is what Dr Hopewell
Ntsinjana, who is NMCH’s
head of cardiology, is hoping
for.
As one of the less than 50
paediatric cardiologists in the
country, Ntsinjana would like
to place the hospital’s cardiology
unit at the forefront
of internationally renowned
research as well as swelling
the pool of a rare breed of
specialists.
He expressed pride at what
he said was the world-class
technology the hospital had
invested in, which he said
would assist in easing the
backlog of children who are
born with treatable congenital
diseases in the country.
Even though the unit had
29 beds, Ntsinjana added,
this would help alleviate the
ever-swelling logjam of much needed
child heart treatment.
“This (29 beds) is a much welcomed
number as it encompasses
both pre- and postoperative
care. This entails
both medical and surgical
care. This is a big platform
where we hope to address
some of the traditional backlogs,”
Ntsinjana said.
“If I can see myself filling
those 29 beds… on a continuous
rotation basis so that
those who are better can go
home or move to regional
facilities so that we can keep
the wheel rolling, that is
when I can start seeing the
impact of what I’m doing in
this place,” he added.
He has almost 10 years’
experience in paediatric
cardiology, including a PhD
which he obtained at the
Great Ormond Street in London,
England.
Dr Jason Labuschagne,
head of
neurosurgery
“The dream we have for
the hospital is to be comparable
to all other reputable
paediatric neurosurgery
units in the world.”
These are the lofty ambitions
of Dr Jason Labuschagne,
whose unit aims to
conduct between 250 and 300
operations a year.
Labuschagne has been at
the hospital since April, and
has been a neurosurgeon for
12 years.
He’s proud to have started
the unit a week earlier than
anticipated. He’s one of two
specialists in the department.
His goal is to make the
unit comparable to international
best standards.
“In this case, you can get
a reputation as an international
unit, where you can
start training international
fellows. We can have people
coming to us to specialise in
paediatric neurosurgery from
the US, Canada or Europe.
“But you need to reach
that critical mass of 250 to 300
cases a year, and you probably
need a faculty of about four
dedicated paediatric neurosurgeons.
That’s what I’d like
to shoot for,” Labuschagne
declared, adding that they
were giving themselves three
years to achieve this.
However, he emphasised
that a competent team was
required, which included theatre
nurses, anaesthetists and
other specialist professionals.
“What is great about this
hospital is that you have
social workers who engage
with the children even before
they go to operation. The
social workers do play therapy
about what’s going to happen
during the operation for
the kids not to be scared. We
have physiotherapists who
see the children before the
surgery, which is rare.”
He said his love for kids
was what drove him to paediatric
neurosurgery, saying he
loved them for their honesty.
“This may sound harsh,
but if you intervene with a
65-year-old… you may win
them 10 good years. When you
intervene with a five-year-old,
you win them 60 good years,”
Labuschagne said.
@khayakoko88