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A WhatsApp message is how prospective student nurses found out that their four-year training would not be happening this year.
This is according to Lerato Madumo-Gova, president of the Young Nurses Indaba Trade Union. The union has been trying frantically to engage with the Gauteng department of health in order to gain clarification on why they had terminated this year’s intake of student nurses into four nursing training colleges – Chris Hani Baragwanath, Anne Latsky, SG Lourens and Garankuwa Nursing College.
The students were supposed to begin their four-year diploma in nursing and midwifery training at these colleges on Monday.
Instead, students were left to wait for hours outside the various colleges, in the hope that the decision would be reversed and they would be able to commence their training.
By the afternoon, they were addressed by an official from the department who said that all applicants would need to convene today at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Nursing College, where the MEC for Health, Dr. Gwen Ramokgopa was expected to address them.
“We were told that the decision has now been reversed and that students are required to bring with them their acceptance letters and all other documentation. The first intake will now be taking place at the beginning of their financial year, which is April this year. The students were notified by SMS,” Madumo-Gova said this morning.
The selection process, Madumo-Gova said, began in May last year when the provincial department advertised that applications were open for prospective nurses.
“It is an annual process ... the Gauteng department of health funds it by awarding bursaries to the students. Thousands of students applied and those who met the requirements were told that they would begin their training today,” she told City Press yesterday.
“While we welcome this decision, we will wait to see what the MEC says this afternoon. We are also concerned about the fact that students will be missing out on learning time if they only start in April,” Madumo-Gova added.
Initially 1020 students were accepted into the programme for the 2018 intake, but the department reduced this number to 700, after budgetary constraints.
“We then received notice from the principals of the colleges that the entire first-year intake had been cancelled by the department. There is a WhatsApp group that all the principals are on, and they received a message from the chief nursing director, Johanna More, indicating that the intake was no longer happening,” Madumo-Gova said.
City Press has still not heard back from the department despite several attempts to get confirmation on this.
Since the students were notified by the colleges of the “non-intake”, there has been no official communication from the department, giving the students a reason why they would no longer be able to pursue their studies and training at the nursing colleges in January, Madumo-Gova added.
MEC for health, Dr Gwen Ramokgopa, who was attending the launch of a new PET-CT machine at Dr George Mukhari Academic Hospital yesterday, touched on the financial constraints behind the reason why the first-year intake of nurses was cancelled. The below commentary is a transcript of a voice note which was received by the department’s communication team, with the MEC speaking.
“Because of the financial situation, we are looking at postponing the starting of the training for first years only. But you must also know that we have second [and] third years who are currently studying in our various institutions and that we will certainly at the beginning of the financial year ensure that the students that have already gone through the screening are indeed part of the first year group that we are taking in,” Ramokgopa said.
The MEC also said that every year, the department of health lost about 1000 nurses, so there was a priority to enrol students into nursing colleges.
“We will take them, it is just a matter of making sure that by the time we take them, there are finances to make sure that we are able to pay their bursaries, pay for their accommodation and also assist them with the training materials,” she said.
“Nurses are the backbone of our health system ... We have an office of a chief nursing manager that coordinates this sector, an important sector of our public service,” Ramokgopa added.
The Economic Freedom Fighter’s student command has been engaging with the union, and has called on the department to explain.
“The country must understand that for our nation to prosper we must prioritise nursing training, nurses, health facilities, nurse psychological support and ensure that we have enough nurses per clinic or hospital,” the command’s spokesperson Mangaliso Sambo said on Saturday, after meeting with the union.
“The meeting resolved that on Monday the prospective students must all show up at their respective training colleges adopting the #SizofundaNgenkani campaign by forcefully claiming their education through entering the campus and receiving their training as expected. Of the 1020 students no one will be turned back as fighters will be deployed in all the gates,” Sambo said.
Yesterday hundreds of students lined up outside the four colleges where some members of the EFF student command could be seen, hoping to hear from the department about what the plan going forward was.
“The situation is quite dire and it is sad because there is a severe shortage of nurses in the health sector. Ultimately it will be the patients that suffer,” said Madumo-Gova, who waited with the students at Chris Hani Baragwanath.
After a student contacted the department via a Twitter message, a response indicated that the intake was postponed but that it would be taking place in April.
The Gauteng department of health was sent a list of questions by City Press and had not received a response by the time of publication.
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