Departmental academic review

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
This review must answer the strategic question of the optimal organizational place of the PHC Directorate within the Faculty. The proposed Department of Health Sciences Education presents an opportunity for new thinking regarding the teaching of PHC. As another cross-cutting entity within the faculty, the DHSE could strengthen currently fractured undergraduate teaching through supporting the development of the so-called “transversal skills and attributes”. Alternatively the DHSE could incorporate the PHC Directorate which could create a viable structure but potentially weaken the PHC theme through a dilutional effect in a larger Department. The teaching and learning of the PHC approach can and should be strengthened, and the application of solid educational theory and principles in a new DHSE could achieve this. Working from a starting point of social accountability, we need to challenge students to think critically, creatively and with agency about initiatives that will facilitate health for all once they are qualified.
At a provincial level, the signing of the MLA with the Western Cape Province Department of Health in 2012 has significant implications for the clinical teaching platform. The successful implementation of teaching at Vredenburg has set a positive precedent in a rural environment, but at a cost that cannot be replicated in every district hospital. The expansion of the clinical teaching platform to George is the next big step, and different teaching models will need to be developed.
At a national level, the PHC re-engineering strategy and the imminent white paper on the National Health Insurance will change the landscape of health services in years to come, in the context of the National Development Plan. We need to be preparing our students and graduates for the NHI and using this as a lever for the PHC approach.
Globally, primary health care is still the way to go, as articulated by the World Health Organization, so the need for a focus on the PHC approach in the teaching, research and service of the Faculty of Health Sciences and UCT will continue for the foreseeable future.