The North West Department of Health plans to recruit, train and retain doctors to work, especially in rural areas.
The new medical school will be located in the university's Faculty of Health Sciences, which already trains pharmacists, nurses, dieticians, biokineticists, psychologists and social workers.The NWU has gone to great lengths to consult various stakeholders in the province to ensure they develop a curriculum that is purpose built for a rural setting and local facilities, Dr Jurgens Staats told Spotlight.
"This includes the development of curriculum , and getting the necessary regulatory approvals from the Health Professions Council of South Africa and Council on Higher Education ," he said, adding that infrastructure would also need to be built and additional staff appointed. When asked about where the budget will come from, he told Spotlight that the funding for the medical school would be addressed only after the process to establish the medical school has been finalised. Despite South Africa's worrying shortage of medical professionals in public service, some medical graduates struggled to find work. According to the SA Medical Association Trade Union , this is due to budget constraints and administrative hurdles.
According to the HPCSA database, there were 46 420 doctors registered as medical practitioners in 2019, of which 40.5% were women. "One of the plans is the occupation specific dispensation which looks at ways of improving the remuneration of health workers, especially since it was realised that the public health sector was losing skilled practitioners.
Van Niekerk is part of the team selected for curriculum development at the medical school. She is a junior specialist physician in the internal medicine department at the Klerksdorp/Tshepong Hospital Complex in the Dr Kenneth Kaunda District. "The learning curve is a lot steeper for them purely because they were trained differently, less hands-on experience, less exposure to illnesses that are common in South Africa," says Van Niekerk.
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