SPECIAL SESSION: The Status of South African Nursing Qualifications

Description/Overview: South Africa has seen significant legislative and policy changes during the last two decades to address the burden of disease in the country. In particular, the increase in policy review during the last two years places a massive demand not only on the number of nurse/midwife practitioners required, but also the need to develop new competencies to fulfil these demands as seen with the Human Resources for Health (HRH) Strategy which identifies South Africa’s health service as nurse driven. New policies include the re-engineered primary healthcare including the National Health Insurance (NHI), HIV testing and counselling (HCT) campaign, task shifting for nurse initiated and management of ART (NIM-ART) with specific changes related to nursing in the form of the Nursing Education, Training and Practice Strategy and legislative changes for a revised scope of practice and education and training programmes to prepare nurses to address the needs of the population. Added to this more recently, are the HIV Prevention, care and treatment targets as outlined in the 90-90-90 strategy. Many of these policies require specialist prepared nurses and all confirm the sense of urgency to increase the number of professional nurses and nurse specialists to ensure an equitable distribution of nursing/midwifery staff with a view to creating a public health system that provides quality care. As a result, nursing education programmes in South Africa are undergoing major change with all nursing programmes migrating to the higher education sector. Institutions will in future be accredited by both the SA Nursing Council and the Council for Higher Education. This will require not only revision of curricula but also upgrading of nursing education institutions, particularly in the public sector, to meet the accreditation criteria of the Council for Higher Education. How this transition will take place is largely dependent on a political decision by the Ministers of Health and Higher Education.