Prof Jimmy Volmink, outgoing Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (FMHS) at Stellenbosch University, sent the Faculty's newly-graduated healthcare workers on their way with a challenge to care for patients not only using the technical skills and knowledge they acquired during their training, but also by advancing health as a human right in their practices.

A total of 1 170 FMHS students are graduating today, 430 of which are receiving their undergraduate medical or health sciences degrees. They will be entering the health system next year as community service health workers.

Volmink delivered his address at the Class of 2021 oath-taking ceremony, where graduates pledged to practice their profession with respect, care, integrity, and compassion.

He maintained that although health is enshrined as a human right in the South African Bill of Rights, health inequities and injustices are common occurrences in the healthcare practice in the country.

“The right to health incorporates several components of health and healthcare, such as the availability, accessibility and quality of healthcare. Dr Martin Luther King Jr said that 'of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhumane'," Volmink added.

He went on to offer advice to the graduates on how to make a difference as healthcare professionals.

“Firstly, we can promote human dignity in every encounter we have with patients," he said and advised them to make encounters with patients – who are often sick, confused and scared – more positive by treating them with kindness, respect and humility.

“Humility promotes patient empathy, and it improves the quality of care as well as patient outcomes," he maintained. “Humility also enables healthcare professionals to recognise and respect the expertise of other healthcare professionals and is the cornerstone of collegial relationships and well-functioning multi-disciplinary teams."

According to Volmink the second way in which healthcare professionals can advance health as a human right, is by acknowledging the impact that living conditions can have on the health of their patients.

“Every day in our clinics around our country, doctors, nurses and other practitioners are exposed to human suffering caused by destructive social, economic, and political forces in society. Through our training or social conditioning we have unfortunately become desensitised to this cause-effect relationship, and consequently we often take the easy option of dishing out chemical cures or technical solutions while we avert our gaze from the root of our patient's condition," Volmink maintained.

Building on this second recommendation, Volmink offered a third way in which healthcare professionals can contribute – by using their voices to advocate for solutions to the adverse conditions affecting health. “Healthcare professionals are respected in society, and they can and should use their influence to make a difference," Volmink said.

He argued that in their work, health professionals directly observe the consequences of the negative social and economic influences on health, and therefore have a special responsibility to work towards correcting these inequalities and injustices. He implored the graduates to serve as champions for their patients, and to advocate for things that will improve their living conditions – such as access to housing, sanitation, food and safe water – which, by implication, would improve their health.

“At the FMHS we have long held the view that the goal of training healthcare professionals is not only to produce good clinicians, teachers and scientists, it is also to produce good citizens, good people, change makers.

“Let us redouble our efforts to build a health system that will provide access to equality and to quality care to the many, not just the few. Let us defend the integrity of science, generate new knowledge, and promote evidence-based decision making. And let us never be allowed to think that science and healthcare alone can achieve health for all. Health is primarily determined by social and economic factors – advancing social justice is the key to good health… As citizens we must fight for policies that create more and better jobs, better education, and better living conditions. We must fight to end gender inequality and racism, and we must refuse to allow corporate greed and corruption to continue unchecked.

“This is the time for us to focus on our common humanity, to build Ubuntu. Forward together to a more just, happier and healthier South Africa," Volmink concluded.