Special Hearings — Health Sector Hearings — 1997-06-18

UNKNOWN: Thank you very much.  Maybe we should just move very quickly into the questions.  I would like to ask the question relating the Nursing Council's relationship with other bodies internationally.  What was the nature of the Council's relationship with such bodies, if any?  And were there any representations from abroad or elsewhere in respect of Council's policies, racist policies, separate registers etc?

FRANK GERMISHUIZEN: Thank you Chairperson.  The Council had a good working relationship with the Nursing Councils of the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Swaziland, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Malawi. Those are all that we could find and we couldn't find any record that there had ever been objections from any of those Councils to Council policies there.  The only correspondence seemed to be about matters of mutual interest such as nursing education and registration and so on.

UNKNOWN: Were there any local objections that you know of, of nurses who were objecting to being on a separate register and does the perception being there that there are different standards for different races and so on?

FRANK GERMISHUIZEN: Chairperson, the only racial discrimination of which the Council was aware, now I'm speaking on behalf people who existed before my time there, was the keeping of the separate registers and rolls for the different population groups as prescribed in the Nursing Act of that era.  Although we are not aware, as a Council of any specific complaints from the Profession, I am very convinced that there must have been many, but there was nothing that we could find in writing anywhere, but I'm sure that the Profession did object.

UNKNOWN: So Mr Germishuizen, the only way in which objections are dealt within the Council is through formal writing to the Council so that if the Council were to be aware of any objections through Press, through conferences, through other means, it would not respond to those objections?

UNKNOWN: I couldn't say they would not respond.  All I can say is that we couldn't find any trace that there had been, either verbal or through the media or through letters, but I'm sure that there must have been objections raised.  Maybe direct to Council members on a personal basis.

UNKNOWN: I asked the question about the relationship within international organisations and your response is that the Council had a relationship with the International Standards Convention, am I correct?

UNKNOWN: Yes the Council in fact was a founder member of a thing known as the International Conference on Nursing Regulatory Bodies. This was founded in 1993.  Prior to that there didn't exist any forum for regulatory bodies to belong to.  There was and still is an organisation known as the International Council of Nurses but that's an organisation for nursing associations and no regulatory bodies belong to that.

UNKNOWN: Yes, we have to understand the difference that the International Council of Nursing is for bodies of nursing associations and bodies that look after nursing issues rather than issues of registration or regulation and discipline, so we need to draw that distinction.
 My question about the separate registers, what information did the Council gain from having a separate register, in other words, how did you use that data?   What use was it to you to have separate registers?

FRANK GERMISHUIZEN: I can only speculate on that one, and my speculation I'm going cancel out when I've said it, possibly so that the Council could provide statistics to the Department of Health on the numbers of nurses in the various population groups and having said that, it really is not necessary because up until about 1994 nurses were identified on the register which was by then long amalgamated.  In fact from 1978 with the new Nursing Act there was only one register, but they were still identified according to population group, so I can't see what the point was at that stage, except that that was the policy of the government of the day.

UNKNOWN: Nor could I.  I couldn't ever work out why I always had a C in front of my registration number.

FRANK GERMISHUIZEN: Could I come in on that?  Those letters, "W,C, V and I" have been removed.  There is no way now of identifying the population group of any of the nurses, which in a way is creating some problems for the Department of Heath if they're doing planning for nursing education for example.  We can't give them statistics.

UNKNOWN: The issue with relation to - there has been  a lot of comment and criticism about the close relationship between the Nursing Council and the Nursing Association where senior members either were serving or had some dealings with the Council thus compromising impartiality of such members. How does the Council react to that?  Is it unusual that nurses who are members of the Association are linked to Nursing Council and so on?

FRANK GERMISHUIZEN: The principle of members serving both on the Council and the Association did not create problems in itself.  You must also remember that up until 1993 it was nurses were legally compelled to belong to the Association as well as to the Council and that in itself caused problems.  But criticism was expressed at the fact that somewhere in the early eighties the president of the Nursing Association was also the vice president of the Council and it was extremely difficult for this person to wear two hats, particularly on issues where the Council and the Association were on a collision course.

UNKNOWN: Was there often a collision course because it seemed as though amongst nurses there seemed to be the perception that there was very close cooperation and very close collusion rather than the Council and the Association being on a collision course?

FRANK GERMISHUIZEN: Chairperson may I ask Professor Kotze to speak to this, she has more experience of that having been a member of SANA ...(intervention)

UNKNOWN: Certainly.

UNKNOWN: Chairperson I think one should look at the historical development of this.  One needs to remember that the South African Nursing Council in this country was instituted through the work of the old South African Nursing Association, the South Association for Trained Nurses, SAATNA. So historically there was a close collaboration between the two bodies.  As a matter of fact, when the Nursing Council was instituted in 1944 it did so with a
PS1 000 that the Nursing Association gave to it to start its work with, and over the years the leaders serving on the Nursing Association were almost naturally also members of the South African Nursing Council.  This persisted for some 30 years.  But over the past 10 years there's been a marked division that developed naturally between the two bodies, so that at the moment I don't think there's a single, and for the past five to six, seven years, there has not been a single member serving on the Association as well as on the Council.  
 So I think historically it's worked itself out and particularly with the factor of voluntary membership of the Nursing Association, that close relationship has been broken. 
 So yes, there were the effects and definitely there were conflicts and there was dissatisfaction amongst the professional members and the profession down at the ground because of this.  But I think we've gone through that stage now.

FRANK GERMISHUIZEN: There was a marriage and now they're divorced.

UNKNOWN: Yes there's been a definite divorce Chairperson.