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Background: This paper investigates the perceptions of medical interns regarding the usefulness of non-mother tongue communication skills taught during the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. In 2003, the university decided to incorporate Afrikaans and IsiXhosa communication skills into the new MBChB curriculum in order to meet the Faculty of Health Sciences goals to promote quality and equity in healthcare, and to prepare graduating health practitioners for multilingual communities where they would be serving. Despite annual internal evaluations and reviews of the languages courses, the usefulness, if any, of the additional languages in the working clinical environment had not been determined., Methods: Data were collected during the second year of medical internship across a five-year period through survey questionnaires, as well as focus group interviews conducted in the Western Cape, South Africa. Surveys were conducted from 2009 to 2013., Results: The study shows that the usefulness of each of the probed categories was not consistent across both languages. The interns expressed a need for an overall improvement of the isiXhosa course offering, while the outcomes for the Afrikaans language were more positive across all categories except for cultural understanding., Conclusion: The study indicates a positive trend amongst the interns towards developing usefulness in communication skills in Afrikaans and isiXhosa to communicate with their patients., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Psychiatry is an under-resourced discipline, specifically in terms of personnel, not least of all in developing world settings. The capacity for training specialists does not seem to meet the requirements of an increasing disease burden. Notwithstanding the status quo, countries in such settings continue to train and graduate specialists. The current paper provides an overview of specialist training in South Africa, specifically noting the exposure to Psychiatry at undergraduate level, within the context of Psychiatric education in an African setting. An important issue is raised-if a country is not able to meet the personnel requirements at specialist level, is it time to reconsider such training within the broader context of psychiatric education based on country-specific needs. Further, the need for an assertive specialist psychiatrist discipline as well as one that is knowledgeable and respectful of indigenous practice is highlighted.

In South Africa, adolescents and young adults (ages 15-24) are at risk of HIV, sexually transmitted infections, and unintended pregnancies. Recently, the Department of Basic Education has revised its sexuality education content and teaching strategies (using scripted lessons plans) as part of its life orientation curriculum. This paper presents the methodology and baseline results from the evaluation of the scripted lesson plans and supporting activities. A rigorous cluster-level randomized design with random assignment of schools as clusters is used for the evaluation. Baseline results from grade 8 female and male learners and grade 10 female learners demonstrate that learners are at risk of HIV and early and unintended pregnancies. Multivariable analyses demonstrate that household-level food insecurity and living with an HIV-positive person are associated with sexual experience and pregnancy experience. Implications are discussed for strengthening the current life orientation program for future scale-up by the government of South Africa.

Academic biomedical engineering (BME) has the potential to address health care needs through the training of graduates able to work in and build the health care technology industry, and through the production of knowledge and research products that can be exploited to enhance health care. This paper explores factors that drive and restrain the relevance of a graduate BME program, i.e. its contribution to health care technology development and utilization, in South Africa, a middle income country with significant health disparities among its population. A focus on clinical and industrial partnerships is proposed.

Unlabelled: Until 1994, physiotherapy education and training were aligned with the expectations of the South African healthcare system. Subsequent to policy shifts since 1994, the professional role of physiotherapists has expanded. In the absence of guiding strategies to support this change, physiotherapy curricula have remained relatively static., Objective: The paper examines the discrepancies between physiotherapy education and training at a South African university post apartheid and the expectations of the healthcare system., Design: Located within critical feminist research framings and employing narrative inquiry as the selected methodology, data were produced through multiple methods to obtain multiple perspectives and orientations., Participants: This multisectorial data production approach involving student physiotherapists, physiotherapy academics and practising physiotherapists included in-depth focus group interviews, individual interviews, life-history biographies and open-ended questionnaires. The data were analysed separately for each group of research participants (physiotherapy students, practitioners and academics), followed by a cross-sector analysis., Results: The analysis illustrated current disciplinary trends and shortcomings of the physiotherapy undergraduate curriculum, whilst highlighting that which is considered valuable and progressive in physiotherapy and health care. The dominant themes that emerged included issues relating to physiotherapy theory and practice, and issues that influenced the construction of relationships in the curriculum., Conclusion: The significance of this study lies in the value of student and practitioner feedback to inform curriculum and professional development in the light of sociopolitical changes and healthcare expectations.

Background: The School of Nursing in which this research was conducted uses a problem based learning approach in clinical nursing courses. Although the skills required for problem solving, and those in nursing care planning, are similar and therefore, support each other in the learning environment, there is limited evidence of the effectiveness of this teaching strategy on problem solving and nursing care planning., Aim: The aim of this study was to implement a change in the clinical nursing course in the third year of the Bachelor of Nursing (BN) programme and determine if this change improved students' problem solving and care planning., Method: A nine-step problem solving process to deal with problem scenarios was introduced. We hoped that consistent use of this systematic process would improve students' problem solving and care planning skills in the classroom and the clinical area. In order to determine change in problem solving and care planning skills we compared (a) the previous third year student performance on semester I and II assessments with those of the study participants and (b) results at the end of semester I with end of semester II within the study cohort. Findings from these analyses are presented in this paper.

Recent technological advances and an escalation of knowledge in dentistry have highlighted the need to revise the current undergraduate dental curriculum at the University of the Witwatersrand. This imperative is reinforced on one hand by manifest problems in content, structure and sequencing of the existing curriculum, and on the other hand by the need to urgently address contemporary South African issues. Revision will also offer the opportunity to incorporate modern educational practice and philosophy. This paper proposes that the contents, sequence and duration of the curriculum must be determined by the knowledge demands of dentistry (global issues) as well as by local constraints. It suggests early clinical contact and changes in syllabus content, pedagogy and assessment practices in an undergraduate course of slightly reduced duration.

Macro-environmental changes in tertiary education have prompted a review of dental curricula in order to address shortcomings in the traditional curriculum. This paper defines the philosophical principles that highlight concepts in the new innovative curriculum. The stance adopted in the development of the macro- as well as the micro-curriculum is described.