Healthcare crisis: the reality of unemployed doctors
DR VARUNA VESCHINI MAHARAJ
The time has come for the annual outcry among medical professionals. We always receive comments such as “doctors are not special - everyone is unemployed,” so let us break down what a lack of healthcare workers means for the country.
After a gruelling high school experience, you are lucky enough to get accepted into a medical school. Personally, I can count the number of days on one hand where I took a day off from studying in matric. You study and work in government hospitals to gain the necessary skills to be a competent doctor. You then go on to internship and community service where you experience how short staffed and resource scarce the public hospitals really are.
During my internship year, I experienced this first-hand. When you are on call, you arrive on duty at 8am with multiple bags as you will need to equip yourself for the next 30 hours. You will begin your normal day work, seeing ward patients, doing ward work such as taking bloods, booking scans, specialist referrals, etc. Since you are the sacrifice of the day, you will also be responsible for all the areas which may need assistance.
Another department needs a consult? Go. The clinic is short-staffed? Go. There is a family in the ward that want an update? Go. A patient just arrived in casualty? Go. At some point, you realise the sun has set, the day shift has gone home and you are still working at full speed trying to get through a list of patients who have been here for hours waiting for you.
By now, you are purely running on adrenaline, as there is no time for rest and refreshments. By the morning, you are tired and delirious but you push on for a few more hours with the newfound excitement that you may have a bath, sleep in your own bed and have something to eat. We do this out of pure passion and drive, not for the glory as the job is anything but glamorous.
The highs of doing the job well and saving a life are unmatched and the lows of losing a patient and breaking the news to the family is unimaginably hard. Naturally, at the end of the process, you assume that the government hospitals need the doctors and yet every year the doctors who are ready to work are sitting at home - unemployed. As much as we appreciate the sentiment that “government is not obliged to hire doctors,” we have to ask the question: but do you not need the doctors?
The repercussions of less doctors in government are longer wait times, less personnel to deal with life threatening emergencies and burnt out doctors who are treating you while sleep deprived. The majority of the population will travel for a few hours to reach a healthcare facility where they might be referred to a different healthcare facility which is better equipped. When they reach that facility, they may sit in a line to find out which department they are being referred to before sitting in another line in the relevant department. By then, even if you were healthy, the process would probably leave you feeling very frustrated!
The unemployed doctors are now given the following options: leave the country or go into private. Going into private practice means being a general practitioner and perhaps opening you own practice. What if you want to specialise? You can only specialise through a government contract at a public hospital. This leaves the young doctors in South Africa feeling stuck, unable to progress or to follow our passions.
This is such a shame as doctors from all over the world want to learn from South African institutions as we have a reputation of producing excellently trained doctors.
This will also impact all sectors including private hospitals as there are no new specialists being produced. You may only work in a private hospital as a general practitioner or a specialist so the cycle of less doctors, longer wait times and suboptimal care continues.
These options are also given from a place of privilege – doctors do not necessarily have the means to emigrate or open their own practice.
South Africa is in for a massive brain drain as doctors are forced to leave to earn a living. According to Solidarity Doctors’ Network, South Africa has 10.3 times fewer doctors in comparison with 30 other countries, where the public relies on the government for healthcare services. They also found that we have 0.3 doctors per 1 000 people of the population which is far below the World Health Organization’s recommendation of at least one doctor per 1 000 patients.
We appeal to the government to absorb more doctors to enable us to serve the community and continue providing world class medical treatment to our country. We want to be part of the solution and not dismissed from the public healthcare sector.
Dr Varuna Veschini Maharaj completed her schooling in Durban, finishing matric as the top learner in maths and physics in KZN, 6th in the district and top of her school- Danville Park Girls High School. After receiving offers to every university, she chose to study at the University of Pretoria where she graduated with her MBChB cum laude. Maharaj developed a passion for anaesthesia and completed her diploma in anaesthesia in 2023. She is now juggling multiple jobs as she waits for a government post to specialise.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.