Seventy - one new Community Service Nurses will be deployed to health facilities next month in the North West Province to do mandatory one year community service. This is in addition to 227 community service nurses that were released to do community service between January and April this year.
The nurses completed their four year nursing training studies and upgraded training from Mmabatho College of Nursing and Excelsius Nursing College in Klerksdorp. A total of 57 nurses are new nurses who will be doing their community service, while the rest have been practicing as nurses and only upgraded at the colleges. The colleges are tasked with training and producing nurses for the health facilities in the province
The new nursing professionals will add value and help address an acute shortage in hospitals, Community Health Centres and clinics especially in remote rural areas.
Benefits such as rural allowances, Occupational Specific Dispensation (OSD), are available to all the nurses working in the province.
The Department of Health will in the next five years increase access to healthcare by placing 1592 nurses to curb the current shortage of nurses in government health facilities. More than 300 nurses will be released from nursing colleges to do mandated community service in rural health facilities this year while 305 nurses will be released next year, 342 nurses in 2013 and 389 nurses in 2014 as per targets of the department.
The department this year awarded 220 bursaries to new recruits at government nursing colleges and North West University to study a four year diploma in Nursing Science and midwifery.
The department is busy with plans to reopen the Nursing School for basic nursing categories in Taung Hospital, to ensure that Taung Hospital produce bedside trained nurses and creating more jobs in the process.
Enquiries:
Tebogo Lekgethwane
Department Spokesperson
Cell: 082 929 9958
E-mail: tlekgethwane@nwpg.gov.za
New nurses to start community service
Province
