A complementary model for medical subspecialty training in South Africa

The shortage of healthcare workers and doctors in the developing world compared with the developed world is problematic, and will continue to be so owing to the ongoing migration of qualified professionals and the inability of the state to remedy the shortfalls. This will seriously hamper the government's National Health Insurance plan and the sustainability of South Africa (SA)'s healthcare sector. Furthermore, it is well known that the duration of medical training in SA is exceptionally long, which discourages trainees. Medical corporates have taken a limited initiative to fund education projects in collaboration with academic institutions. These projects have been unstructured, mostly ad hoc, and poorly co-ordinated. The private corporate medical sector has expressed a desire to become involved on a much larger scale by means of more formalised structures. Given this background, the primary objective of our research was to develop a business model to complement the current academic medical subspecialty training.