Nurses can expect new challenges from disability ruling

The fact that the Portfolio Committee for Social Development has not passed the clauses dealing with disability in the Social Amendment Bill poses major challenges for the country’s nurses, Dr Vicki Pinkney-Atkinson, UNEDSA programme manager, announced after attending a recent meeting of the committee.

This decision was taken because the Department of Health (DoH) is not ready to implement that Harmonised Assessment Tool (HAT) - a standardized assessment tool for both the Disability Grant administered by the Social Security Agency of South Africa (SASSA) and the policy of Free Health Care at Hospitals for People with Disabilities (FHC) which is administered by the DoH.

Why nurses need to be aware of this issue, said Pinkney-Atkinson, was that current thinking is that nurses and other therapists be trained to do these assessments previously conducted by government doctors. Not only would this influence nursing practice, the UNEDSA official added, it would also have important, life-saving implications for poor, chronic care patients who remain excluded by the current system.