Mentoring as a strategy to increase executive leadership competence during a developing country’s health reform

4^th International Conference on Nursing & Healthcare

October 05-07, 2015 San Francisco, USA

Eunice Seekoe

University of Fort Hare, South Africa

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: J Nurs Care

Abstract :

Mentoring for leadership and stewardship development on the national, provincial and district level is a crucial strategy for delivering a better public health system. South Africa is seemingly, not achieving MDG goals 4 and 5 of reducing child, neonatal and maternal mortality rate. Seventy five percent of children are still dying and 23 000 in their first four weeks of life, 23 000 are still births and closely linked to 1660 maternal deaths. The National Health Minister�s strategy of re-engineering primary health care and introduction of the National Health Insurance leads to a major political reform agenda calling for different functioning of health leaders. Any change must be seen to improve health outcomes. The introduction of NHI will give the community members an opportunity to choose health services on the basis of quality delivered. Three universities (two local and one international) collaborated with the National Department of Health, including a Non-Governmental Organisation to train Albertina Sisulu executive fellows. A reflective and competence development mentoring model is strategically applied to ensure delivery of quality health services. Both quantitative and qualitative approach using self-structured and interviews to collect data were used to evaluate the success of the mentoring programme. The outcome is empowering and building capacity of executive fellows to make decisions and choices in a decentralized/devolved authority.

Biography :

Email: ESeekoe@ufh.ac.za