Gauteng Health MEC Gwen Ramokgopa has disclosed that the Gauteng Health Department is facing a “critical shortage of skilled nursing personnel”. The Citizen reports that this is according to Jack Bloom, the Democratic Alliance MPL in Gauteng who said Ramokgopa revealed last week at a nurses’ seminar that the Health Department was operating on a staff establishment based on the provincial population of 2006, when there were 4.8m fewer people.
Bloom said the number of nursing posts was based on a population of 9.5m in 2006, but that population had “grown to an estimated 14.278m over the past 12 years without any upward adjustment”.
The report says this situation has been worsened by a circular to hospitals directing them to fill only 50% of vacant funded posts occupied by retired, resigned and deceased nursing personnel.
“I am horrified by Ramokgopa’s admission that these circumstances led to nursing managers allocating unskilled nursing personnel to attend to patients in critical areas. This is extremely irresponsible, and raises the risk of medical negligence,” said Bloom.
Bloom said another bombshell was that “the department does not have an approved organisational structure for the review period 2014-19″. “A draft has been developed and approved by the Executing Authority but has to be ratified by the minister of public service and administration,” he said.
“The department has a weak human resource division, which is why it operates on an outdated and inadequate personnel structure that cannot provide quality care to patients.”
A bad situation is worsened by the current crude policy of filling only 50% of unfilled posts, which is putting great strain on hospital staff,” Bloom is quoted in the report as saying. He said the department needed to strengthen its top management team, which currently goes from blunder to blunder.
[link url="https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/1962785/gauteng-health-department-admits-to-huge-nursing-shortage/"]The Citizen report[/link]