Netcare CEO Richard Friedland last week sounded the alarm about a looming critical shortage of nurses, going as far as comparing it to “the Eskom crisis”.
Friedland’s main gripe was about restrictions on how many nurses private hospitals may train. He said Netcare had capacity to train more than 3,500 nurses a year but was only accredited to take about 10% of that. Life Healthcare chief nurse officer Merle Victor shared similar frustrations with TimesLIVE, saying it requested approval from the South African National Nursing Council to double the number of nurses it trains “because we have adequate learning opportunities across all our facilities, but to date no such approvals have been forthcoming”. This state of affairs is counterproductive and places the overburdened healthcare system under unnecessary pressure.
At the same time, the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (Denosa) has said its research shows there are up to 20,000 unemployed nurses in South Africa, including about 10,000 in Gauteng, 5,000 in the Free State and 3,000 in Mpumalanga. This while Friedland said there was a shortage of nurses of between 26,000 and 62,000 — plus, a large number is expected to retire by 2030, when the nursing shortage crisis will really hit us. He did not exclude court action from possible ways to force the government to allow private hospitals to train more nurses. The nursing council has itself confirmed about half of South Africa's nurses are due to retire in less than a decade.
The government needs to take the warnings from the private healthcare sector seriously, even though it is already five years too late.
Many stakeholders are talking about a problem that seems to have at least partly an obvious solution: why can private hospitals not employ the nurses without jobs? There seems to be a breakdown in communications and co-ordination in systems. Some of these government nurses may not have the right skill set for what is needed by the private health sector or may not be available in towns where the shortages are and some may also be close to retirement. But even so, there may be a solution staring our private healthcare providers in the face, it just needs to become a visible solution. Asked about this, Netcare’s group director for human resources Dr Nceba Ndzwayiba said: “We have also noted reports about an available pool of unemployed, qualified nurses. We are continuing to engage the relevant stakeholders and have issued advertisements on various platforms to put as many of these nurses into jobs.”
This must mean our government and private healthcare providers are not using available resources. Has there been any attempt by the stakeholders involved — public and private and the nursing unions — to try to solve a problem for several parties, including those desperate for jobs and those desperate for nurses? Now that Friedland and Life Healthcare have spoken out, perhaps those involved will take note. But another statement from Friedland does not bode well for us. As long ago as 2018 the Hospital Association of South Africa tabled a proposal at the presidential jobs summit on how to eliminate the nurses shortage within eight years. It is now five years later and nothing has come of it.
Several things need to change for this situation to start improving. The government needs to take the warnings from the private healthcare sector seriously, even though it is already five years too late. We still have time to avert a national crisis if we act swiftly. Nursing unions need to become actively involved in liaising with private healthcare to find out its needs and identify which of its members without jobs would qualify to fill some of these positions. At the same time private hospitals need to work with unions such as Denosa to try to upskill already trained nurses who would be a good fit in their institutions. It should continue to rally the government and the South African National Nursing Council, which is responsible for the accreditation of nursing education institutions, to reconsider the restrictions imposed on how many nurses private healthcare institutions are permitted to train without compromising healthcare facilities and their patients.
This is a problem that can be resolved without costly and lengthy legal action if all the stakeholders involved become actively interested in preventing an emergency in the long-term. Life Healthcare CEO Peter Wharton-Hood said the nursing shortage could pose a greater threat than rolling blackouts because hospitals can buffer themselves against load-shedding with investments in alternative power solutions, but little can be done to mitigate the risks of staff shortages. The last thing our already fragile health sector can afford is a grid collapse of another kind.
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