South African medical journal = Suid-Afrikaanse tydskrif vir geneeskunde
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Medical practitioners in South Africa manage a quadruple burden of disease. Junior doctors, who contribute significantly to the health workforce, must complete 2 years of internship training and 1 year of community service work in state health facilities after graduation to register as an independent medical practitioner. The aim of this article is to give a critical appraisal of the current national internship programme and why it was implemented, and outline suggestions for future changes. There is a compelling need to train competent, confident doctors while ensuring that the requirements and demands of our health system remain a central concern.
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Observational Study
The association between cytology and histopathology in thyroid nodules over a 6-year period in an urban hospital in South Africa.
Thyroid cancer is prevalent both internationally and locally, and is the most common cause of endocrine malignancies in Africa. The prognosis of thyroid cancer in general is quite good, but to achieve good outcomes, appropriate methods for diagnosis are important. A cytology result obtained from a fine needle aspiration and biopsy (FNAB) is one such method, and is less invasive and has less risk compared with obtaining a histological result via open surgery. However, there are accuracy differences that have been reported in different literature findings. ⋯ There was good correlation between cytology and histology for thyroid nodules. Differences were noted between the percentage of malignant cases in the different Bethesda categories compared with international standards as noted above. We recommend that further studies are conducted locally to improve knowledge on this topic.
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Personal information in health research commands utmost protection while also preserving the growth of health research. This paper aims to establish which legislation applies when processing personal information for health research. South Africa regulates health research on human subjects through a network of Human Research Ethics Committees. ⋯ Section 2(3)(b) of POPIA provides that POPIA does not apply where other legislation creates 'more extensive' conditions for the lawful processing of personal information than Chapter 3 of POPIA does. We show that the provisions of the sectoral legislation on health are more extensive than the conditions in Chapter 3 of POPIA and hence the sectoral legislation prevails. This simplifies the regulation of health research. One of the implications of this finding is that the definition of broad consent in the sectoral legislation for health research should be applied to the exclusion of the consent provisions in POPIA.