The North-West University aims to enrol the first students at its new medical school by 2028. This year is dedicated to curriculum development and the construction of the school building.

Fifty students will be able to enrol at the institution for their first year of study in 2028 and in two years the number of students will increase by eighty. After four years one hundred first-year students will be enrolled at the institution.

The school will be implemented initially on the Potchefstroom campus for the preclinical training with plans to extend it to the Mahikeng campus in the future.

‘The medical school building must be completed in 2026’

“We are preparing to construct a medical school building on the Potchefstroom campus and clinical training buildings on the Klerksdorp Tshepong Hospital Complex. The medical school building must be completed by the end of 2026,” said NWU Medical School project team operations lead Professor Petra Bester.

“Medicine requires not only infrastructure within the university but a close collaboration with the department of health because these students need to be able to get all those necessary experiences within the department.”

“And our students will work in primary health care clinics, community health centres all levels of hospital care as well as the Klerksdorp Tshepong Hospital Complex which is a tertiary hospital where they will do most of their training,” said Bester.

Professor Bester said students need to have posts after their post-academic training. Picture: nwu.ac.za

In 2024 the institution plans to finalise the curriculum development process to submit its application to the Council for Higher Education (CHE) and parallel to that it needs to get accreditation from the HPCSA.

From 2025 to 2026, whilst awaiting approval from the CHE and the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA), staff must be appointed, study guides and training materials must be developed, and the learning management system must be prepared.

In 2027, the interior preparation and set-up of laboratories and teaching-learning technologies must be completed.

Key criteria of the NWU Medical School. Picture: health-sciences.nwu.ac.za

“The North West province is one of the provinces with one of the lowest ratios of doctors to patients. So when we train our doctors we will do that in close collaboration with the North West Department of Health,” said Professor Bester. “Students need to have posts after their post-academic training.”

The NWU medical school obtained permission from the Minister of Health, Dr Joe Phaahla, on 22 December 2023, to progress with the medical school and to adhere to all the required approvals and accreditation requirements.

OFM News/Zenande Mpame cg