Medical interns in limbo as department misses statutory placement deadline

A GROUP of medical interns have been left hanging and uncertain about their future after the national and provincial health departments missed their deadline for statutory community service placements.

This comes after the Health Department was unable to provide feedback on the placement of the interns, including doctors and trainee pharmacists, by the midyear application cycle deadline of Tuesday.

According to Dr Thozama Bosman, more than 200 trainee doctors who had applied through the department’s online internship and community service programme (ICSP) portal were yet to be informed of their placements in communities across the country.

“I’m a second-year intern at Klerksdorp awaiting community service placement. I have to start on July 1. I represent a group of interns in the same position as I am who have not been placed for the 2023 midyear cycle for community service.

“The National Health Department opened the applications on May 15 and closed the application process on May 28.

“We had to be placed by June 12. Then the Health Department posted on its ICSP page that we would be placed on June 13. We were not placed,” Bosman said.

She added that she had learnt from the WhatsApp status of one of the provincial co-ordinators that applicants would only be placed when provincial placements were made.

“We don’t know when it will happen. But now we’re in limbo about when it will happen as we await feedback from the department.”

She said trainee doctors, pharmacists and other young professionals in the field were affected.

“We’re worried that we are going to go through what we went through in 2021, when we had to seek legal representation after we were told that there were no funds to facilitate our placements,” she said.

Another trainee medical doctor, who declined to be named, said: “Without completing community service, doctors are not allowed to practise at all, as per the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) rules. The onus is on the HPCSA to allocate us to facilities so that we may complete our community service.”

She said many trainee medical doctors had submitted their applications last year but had heard nothing since.

The SA Medical Association said it wasn’t aware of the delay in the confirmation of the placement of trainee medical officers, but would investigate.

Spokesperson for the National Department of Health, Foster Mohale, said: “The department has released results to provinces on Tuesday, June 13 and obviously it may take them a few days to conclude a process of reaching all applicants.

“We are also sending emails from today (Wednesday) and finalising tomorrow (Thursday).”