4 May 2006
Rustenburg - The Department of Health in the North West will be hosting a
one-day retired nurseâs summit on Monday, 8 May 2006, at Hunterâs Rest Resort
in Rustenburg.
Over 200 delegates made up of retired nurses from the provinceâs four
districts, representatives from nursing unions and nursing colleges in the
province will discuss ways in which retired nurses can be brought back to help
the health system and rekindle the dying spirit in what used to be a noble
profession as founded by the likes of Sister Florence Nightingale.
Key issues on the table will include the terms and condition of service,
placement and deployment criterion, cut of age and how best can these stalwarts
help the current young generation of nurses to revive the profession.
Currently the province is experiencing a serious shortage in terms of
professional nurses and our two nursing colleges are not producing enough
nurses to deal with the challenge of shortages and lack of skill. The province
has close to 4 000 vacancies across all our institutions and clinics with
regard to all categories of nurses and we receive far few applications from
prospective nurses.
âWe are highly worried by this situation and we hope this summit will pave
way for a more protracted and target recruitment drive, we are aware of certain
constrains poses by the public service regulations in particular on using
people who have exited the service but we are confident that we will overcome
this challenges,â explains North West Health MEC Nomonde Rasmeni.
The summit will be officially opened by the Health MEC who is expected to
paint a detail picture of the scale of shortages and how do we plan to use the
skills from our retired nurses to improve service delivery in our institutions.
Members of the media are hereby invited to the summit which we hope will expose
them to the level of shortages we are experiencing in the health care
system.
Enquiries
Barba Gaoganediwe
Departmental Spokesperson
Tel: (018) 387 5830
Fax: (018) 387 5830
E-mail: kgaoganediwe@nwpg.gov.za
Issued by: Department of Health, North West Provincial Government
4 May 2006
Source: North West Provincial Government (http://www.nwpg.gov.za/)
