[Groote Schuur is where the world’s first heart transplant took place. Look at its ever-worsening pathetic state. We are losing nurses at a phenomenal rate. Jan]

Groote Schuur Hospital is so desperately short of nurses that doctors were recently asked to plug the gaps.

In a plan born of desperation, doctors training to become anaesthetists were asked to watch over patients recovering from operations, and surgeons in training might have had to do nurses’ theatre duties.

For the anaesthetics registrars, this would have meant monitoring patients in recovery rooms, where they were sent after operations. The surgical registrars would have had to hand surgeons implements in theatre, among many other nursing duties, instead of helping to operate.

Some registrars refused to co-operate, however, and the plan was scuppered on the day it was planned to begin.

‘We just can’t find the nurses that we need’
This decision was made because hospital authorities realised that the doctors would not have been insured if they had made mistakes, said hospital chief Saadiq Kariem on Wednesday.

“Heads of department suggested the plan and we gave the go-ahead out of sheer desperation,” he said. “We just can’t find the nurses that we need, particularly for theatre.”

“The shortage of nurses is so bad that we are talking about closing theatre lists, but we hope it’s not going to come to that.”

Groote Schuur operating theatres were short of about one-third of their staff and there had been times when intensive care wards were short of half the nurses they needed, depending on whether agencies had been able to supply nurses, said Kariem.

Late last year, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang revealed that almost 31 000 nursing posts were unfilled countrywide.

Gauteng had the greatest nursing shortage, with 7 976 posts unfilled, and the Western Cape had 2 533 vacancies. This was less than half the number of vacancies in KwaZulu-Natal, which had 6 098 empty posts, while the Free State is short of 4 234.

These figures include vacancies for all nursing categories, including assistants.

Thembeka Gwagwa, chief of the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa, told a recent nursing congress in Britain that South Africa was losing 300 nurses a month to the First World.

The Royal College of Nursing said that in the past three years 40,000 foreign nurses – 45 percent of all new registrations in that time – had registered to work in Britain. Most were from South Africa, the Philippines and India.

“All the hospitals have the same problem,” said Kariem. “We are looking at training other categories of nurse to alleviate the shortage. We want to appeal to nurses who have taken a package or retired to contact us. All solutions people might want to suggest are welcome.”

Richard Muller, head of theatre and intensive care at Tygerberg Hospital, said the hospital had between 15 percent and 20 percent fewer nurses than it should, but had not asked doctors to do nursing duties.

This article was originally published on page 1 of Cape Times on June 24, 2004

Source: Independent Online (IOL)
URL: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click…/p>