Issued by Ministry of Health
04 August 2005
It is important that we provide the context and the background to the comment made by the Minister of Health, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang about the review of the curriculum for medical doctors.
The Department of Health has been engaged in the discussion to review and standardise the duration of the curriculum for medical students for the past few years.
In this regard, the Minister and MEC for Health agreed to endorse the decision of the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) on the restructuring of the curriculum. HPCSA took a position that student-doctors should undergo a five-year medical education and training programme followed by two years of internship.
This means that many health faculties should reduce their six-year training programme to five years. Currently, three medical schools have switched over to 5-year curriculum. These are the medical faculty at the Walter Sisulu University of Technology (UNITRA), the medical faculty at the University of Free State and the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in UKZN. The other five medical faculties are still on a 6-year curriculum.
The period of internship has been increased from one to two years.
The rationale for this change in internship period of 1 year was that the length was not enough to give interns sufficient experience and interns did not gain all exit competencies necessary for service delivery. For instance, previous internship covered three or four domains, which are internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynaecology. These domains have been increased to cover anaesthetics, psychiatry and other fields, thereby requiring an increase in the period of internship from one to two years. This will ensure that doctors have necessary competencies to South Africa's health care needs.
The Minister and the MEC's agreed that that students should be paid for the two years of internship.
Contact Sibani Mngadi
Spokesperson for the Minister of Health
0827720161