Master of the Ceremony,
DDG for Health Services, Dr Andrew Robinson,
Executive Managers of the Department,
The Director for Multi College Campus, Ms Gontsana,
The Principals of our Nursing Colleges,
Chairpersons of the Nursing Colleges Councils,
SRC Presidents for the two Colleges
Various academics present in this graduation ceremony,
Our graduates,
Parents of our graduates,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a privilege and great honour to address you in this important ceremony. The Nursing Graduation ceremony always brings excitement and hope not only to the graduates but to all of us who hold the nursing profession dearly in our hearts. It’s a culmination of all that hard work you put in over the years, a culmination of sleepless nights and a reward to the believe you all had, that one day you will achieve your goal.
The ceremony gives us hope because at this very moment, the graduates are full of hope about a better tomorrow. I am sure, as they sit here waiting to receive their accolades, they can already imagine themselves in the workplace, putting into practice what they have learnt all these years. These is a dream we as the providers of the nursing education, excitingly share with our graduates today.
Nonetheless, I have no doubt the excitement of the parents of these learners goes deeper than a most of us can imagine. It is the parent’s pride to see their children succeed in life.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am here today in this graduation ceremony to officially declare our graduates fit enough to resume their nursing profession and to serve the nation in this calling which is their choice. Nursing as a profession is not a profession for the faint hearted, yet it has been developed over the years as a profession with high integrity and a high level of sense of duty. It is one of the few professions which require one to take an oath because it’s that serious, it’s about saving lives.
I have to say, the profession has lately been under a lot of criticism mainly because of the attitudes of our nurses, the immense pressure they work under, shortage of professionals and their working conditions, just to name a few.
We are in a process of Re-engineering Primary Health Care and no doubt, nurses are the back bone of Primary Health Care. This has been emphasized over and over again. The National Nursing Summit we held recently is a reference point. It is thus important for our graduate nurses here today to note that they are key for our programme of revitalizing primary health. It is important that you note the following:
That:
- Government and the Department of Health is committed to improve nursing education and will continue promote nursing as a career of choice.
- We treat nursing as a profession of respect, dignity and honour.
- We concede that there is a need for quality education and training of nurses and we will continue to do all we can to make this possible.
- Therefore, in our effort to bring dignity to the nursing profession, we caution the public and prospective student nurses against enrolling with illegal institutions which are not approved by the South African Nursing Council (SANC) and/or training programmes not approved by the SANC intended to qualify a person to practice as a nurse.
We are doing all we can to restore the dignity of the nursing profession. We want you to see nursing as a person-centered profession, to have good manners, respect for human dignity, compassion, caring attitude, and high degree of commitment to public service as well as a sense of duty. We want you to assist us to revive the unifying spirit of Ubuntu/Botho that is synonymous to this profession. We encourage you to continue to live, and put into action the Batho Pele principles as you practice nursing in our various health facilities and communities.
We also understand that it is important for us to improve the working conditions of our nurses. I want to see our nurses productive and the best way of getting them to be productive is to improve their working conditions and make them happy. First, we want our facilities to reflect a healthy environment and to be seen from outside as places of healing.
It is public knowledge that a rural province like ours is running short of health professionals. Adding to this problem has been the fact that most of our graduates desert us for greener pastures elsewhere as they migrate to the so called developed metropolitans while neglecting their own people and province.
We have now filled majority of all nursing posts in the province with few still vacant. We want to fill all these posts and continue to train more nurses. As honourable Premier has said in the State of the Province Address, the North West province will in the next five years produce about 1592 nurses from Government Nursing colleges tasked with producing nurses for public health facilities in the province. We are also in a process of re-opening the Taung Nursing College.
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 new nursing professionals upon completion will add value and help address an acute shortage in hospitals, Community Health Centers and clinics especially in remote rural areas. The Department needs over 2000 nurses to complete its nursing staff complement and we are pleased that the plan to produce 1590 professional nurses will eventually curb shortage. These new graduates will indeed add to our goal.
Allow me to also put it on record that I will not allow any nursing professional who completed a four year nursing diploma at Government run nursing college to sit at home unemployed. We need nurses and we want to fight unemployment.
One of the Governments biggest successes in health delivery since 1994 has been to increase the facilities available to the people at community level. We have experienced success in getting more services nearer to the people however, staffing of these clinics is often a problem and we believe as we produce more nurses their priority will be to serve our rural communities with pride and in the process solve our problem as more and more nurses are needed at community level.
Government has put effort to see to it that nurses are properly remunerated, particularly those who opt to go to the rural areas where we are generally experiencing problems of attracting health professionals especially. We have introduced the scarce skills and rural allowance as way of attracting nurses to rural areas. Our nurses’ homes are also conducive to a home environment and we ensure that they meet the needs of our nurses.
Ladies and gentlemen, once more thank you very much for sharing this important ceremony with us. We depend on all of you to make the nursing profession a fulfilling career. I wish the new graduate nurses a happy and rewarding career.
I thank you.
