COMMUNITY SERVICE: DA PROPOSES BILL ON ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO HEALTHCARE PLACEMENTS

COMMUNITY SERVICE: DA PROPOSES BILL ON ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO HEALTHCARE PLACEMENTS

• 08 November 2024
• Health & Safety
• SA Legal Academy

In anticipation of tabling a Health Professions Amendment Bill in Parliament to address the internship and community service placement funding crisis in public health facilities, Democratic Alliance MP Michéle Clarke has gazetted an explanatory summary also calling for input by 8 November 2024.

The summary proposes ‘an alternative means’ for fulfilling mandatory internship and community service requirements by allowing graduates and trainees to apply for placements at private health facilities. This is with a view to ensuring that:

• no newly qualified healthcare practitioner is left ‘without recourse or employment’
• no medical doctor in training is unable to fulfil internship and community service requirements
• healthcare graduates have the opportunity meet the necessary criteria to register with their professional associations, and that
• medical doctors in training are not prevented from qualifying because of shortfalls in placement funding.

Against that backdrop, it is envisaged that the private health facility concerned would cover the cost of the eligible intern or newly qualified healthcare practitioner placed there. In Clarke’s view, this would:

• assist in developing ‘a strong private-public partnership … (across) the healthcare sector’, and
• enable private health facilities to benefit from and build on the skills of talented young, suitably qualified healthcare graduates and interns, also facilitating their accreditation.

Please click the link below to access the document:

• explanatory summary

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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