Healthcare is people intensive exercise and the cost of employment is the largest component of the budget of every provincial health department in South Africa and elsewhere. It follows that only staff who are skilled and essential at all levels of the organisation to the delivery of quality and affordable healthcare should be employed. Unfortunately, in my experience, the South African Public Health Service has too many people who lack the required skills or are wrongly placed in the organisation resulting in poor performance. It follows also that a person unable to effectively perform his or her allocated tasks, for whatever reason, or who is not essential to the delivery…
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Decisions and Decision Points … the challenge of leadership
Now in my 73rd year, I have the benefit of looking back on decisions that affected the direction of my life. As a schoolboy, I was attracted to the law but a strong dislike of Latin, then a requirement to study law, lead me to enrol as a medical student. Many years later with a successful career as a paediatrician in academia, the politics of South Africa lead me to change direction and move into health management after 1994. Twenty years later, I ended my management career, retiring as the Head of the Western Cape Department of Health. An unplanned course but as the title of my valedictory address delivered…