Cape Town - Health MEC Dr Nomafrench Mbombo along with Tygerberg Hospital staff provided a realistic yet encouraging view of what lies ahead for its new cohort of medical interns and students.
The department welcomed about 75 new medical interns and community service doctors from across the country at the hospital on Tuesday.
At the Western Cape College of Emergency Care, at Tygerberg Hospital, Mbombo greeted 39 Emergency Medical Care (ECA) Higher Certificate students.
They are employees from EMS and the Emergency First Aid Response (EFAR) community outreach programme, as well as 18 Continuous Education and Training (CET) students, who are EMS employees hoping to upgrade their matric results to meet the entry criteria for the new qualifications on offer.
Addressing the interns, hospital chief operating officer, Dr Paul Ciapparelli, said: “Internship is a training experience. You will be delivering a lot of service, so what we want to offer you is state-of-the-art equipment.
“Most importantly, there’s a huge amount of intellectual capital in an institution like this. We want you to benefit from that to get state-of-the-art training and that you reflect in your later years warmly and satisfactorily on your intern experience year.”
The hospital was built in the 1960s and opened in 1976, with 55-57km in passages, making it one of the largest hospitals in the Western Cape, and second largest in the country.
Dr Ciapparelli said there was a programme under way to upgrade the infrastructure inside the building.
Intern curator Dr Roshni Mistry said for 2023, the hospital requested 76 interns, despite an intern funding capacity of 35.
“The rest is all dependent on national funding,” Mistry said.
Stellenbosch University graduate and first-year intern, Dr Carl Arndt, 24, said: “I chose Tygerberg to do my internship because as a student, I was continuously fascinated by being able to offer world-class healthcare to patients who needed it, at no cost.
“For example, I love telling patients that their surgery tomorrow will be performed by the state-of-the-art Da Vinci robot, by a surgeon who is considered a world leader in their field, all at a cost of R70. It’s truly a miracle.
“It was daunting despite even knowing what to expect by working here before, it was still daunting to start as a doctor now and it was very different.
“There are lots of challenges that we face, lots of patients to see, few doctors, but luckily here’s a really good support structure, and it’s made everything really quite easy.”
Mbombo said Tygerberg usually gets the largest intern intake compared with other hospitals.
Mbombo said interns will be paid a salary; not a stipend.
Intern Natheela Mahmood, 22, from Durban studied diagnostic radiography at the Durban University of Technology for four years.
“So far it’s going well. You have your ups and downs. It was a different environment compared with where I’m from.
“The language barrier is a little bit of a challenge because it’s mostly an Afrikaans-speaking hospital but the equipment is really nice compared with back where I’m from, so hopefully I’ll get to learn more stuff, more techniques.
“I’ll get to meet different people, learn about the different cultures, be exposed to the machines that aren’t available at other hospitals: that we have at Tygerberg.”
shakirah.thebus@inl.co.za