Nursing malpractice has resulted in a significant rise in civil claims against private hospitals, according to a study by Professor Ethelwynn Stellenberg of the Department of Nursing and Midwifery at Stellenbosch University’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (FMHS).
“The quality of care is declining in both the state and private sectors. The cost of clinical mistakes is just too high.” It is not only the increase in the number of claims that is troubling, but also the scale, with many amounting to pay outs of millions of rand. In the end these costs are passed on to the consumer,” she says.
Failure to follow guidelines and poor monitoring of patients are contributing factors in these malpractice cases. She finds it concerning that most of these cases are settled quietly, which means that important information does not reach the people who use private hospitals.
The study mainly focused on Gauteng and the Western Cape, where the biggest hospitals
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