The message here is that if you are training short courses in first aid for legal compliance, you should still go with the QCTO programs that are available, being SP230801, 230802, 230803. Do this until there is a clear new path. I will keep my mailing list informed (if you are not on my list, email me).
This article is in response to blowback from this article: HPCSA & QCTO pull the plug on all three QCTO first aid programs because of the word “emergency”
It is time to touch base about this and take stock of where we are with first aid training in South Africa:
Please do not lose the message of this article. I am advising my clients to still apply and train the existing QCTO first aid programs (SP230801, 230802, 230803) until they are substituted with the new ones, which are essentially the same curricula with different ID’s and names.
Here’s why:
I find it hard to believe that anyone who cares about first aid training was not aware that in 2023 the three QCTO first aid curricula were being developed. My office canvassed to over a thousand people inviting them to get involved and to tell everyone they knew that it was happening. HWSETA canvassed too.
The door was wide open! The first development session we had was attended by 35 or so members of the public. The next session there were less, until there was just a focus group of 8 – 10 people who attended sessions regularly to develop the curricula. We worked every Monday on it in four hour sessions, week after week. My office pushed very hard after that to ensure QCTO actually published the curriculum to their website instead of passing it around internally for month after month like they were doing.
Endless meetings after the fact: Finally it was released in September 2023 and since then we (the focus group who developed the curricula) have been called into meeting after meeting about it. We are not paid to do this, we have given up our time serve the industry and our respective clients. These after-the-fact meetings were called by QCTO and HWSETA to address various comments that stakeholders had; the same stakeholders who could have got involved when the door was open.
Last to sit up and notice QCTO first aid was happening was the HPCSA: Another series of meetings were called to hear them out and eventually they made their mark on QCTO first aid. In the form of Ben Van Nugteren demanding the removal of the word “emergency” from the titles of the three QCTO first aid curricula. QCTO say they will oblige but a title change means they must get new skills program IDs, and that in turn means they must be replaced with basically the exact same programs, but SDP’s must apply for them as if they are new, even though the content barely changes at all.
What a ride this has been!
CONTEXT: Lime Green does not train, I assist training businesses. My clients get a lot of business from companies who send their employees for training in short courses for South African OHS legal compliance reasons. Employers send employees on course so they can achieve legal compliance, but they want their employees back at work pronto!
What short course can an employer send their employee on for first aid to achieve legal compliance?
✅ QCTO first aid as it currently (June 2024) stands? Yes, this is accepted as satisfying legislation (OHS Act) and is endorsed by DEL.
❌ SETA first aid? Sure, but only for another 10 days from the date this article was written. I have emailed the ETQA managers at TETA and HWSETA to ask of they are still taking applications for unit standard training in first aid and OHS (e.g. 119567, 8016). Sandy and Baakedi both said no. This may change but at time of writing the answer is no.
❌ DEL first aid? Nope, DEL endorses QCTO first aid as a regulatory body and does not directly quality assure it. They will send to you QCTO.
❌ HPCSA BAA, AEA, or CCA? Nope, AEA and BAA were discontinued because HPCSA says they are oversupplied, and CCA is 9 months. Also none of these are NQF aligned.
❌ HPCSA ECT, ECP? These courses are 1 to 4 years and are on NQF levels 6,7 and 8.
❌ American Hearth Association (AHA) courses? These are not accepted for legal compliance.
❌ Non-accredited courses? Not for legal compliance. Any training provider can do non-accredited training if they have a learner who simply wants skills and does not need it in the currency of education in South Africa, which is NQF credits.
Because QCTO first aid is the only legally compliant short course training, I encourage clients to carry on applying for this and training it.
Government departments like QCTO and HWSETA tend to move slowly unless they are driven and under pressure from the public. I am quite happy to allow them to move slowly on this matter; glacially in fact.
I am making the conversion from the SP230801, 230802, 230803 programs to the new ones (yet to be given ID’s) painless for clients (past, present, and future) in a number of ways. Contact me on how that works. Key to this is that I will be releasing the updated learning material as a revision of the current programs instead of as a new product.
To be clear, the curricula content barely changes at all. They were put together by industry experts and followed due process. But a title change means an ID change, which means SDP’s must substitute the re-named curricula when they arrive.
Since I pay the rent on this website I’ll include my personal opinion on this:
Ben Van Nugteren at HPSA says he is about protecting the patient. How much is removing the word “emergency” from the three QCTO first aid curricula going to protect a patient?
Other HPCSA interventions definitely sounded patient focused. Like the BVM, oxygen, and tourniquet discussions by the Doctors on the HPCSA emergency care board who spoke less than Ben did, but who intervened on medical issues. To me personally those statements could directly be linked to patient care even by a layman.
It must be said though, if the program name change HPCSA were rigid on did not result in the need for reapplication we would not really be making a fuss. And the re-application thing was the QCTO’s decision. However, given that, and given HPCSA know this, their response could possibly be to debate it further rather than to ask to exit the meeting when the blowback started as a result of the title change.
Ben Van Nugteren said other things I thought were strange, such as suggesting terms including “Basic Life Support” and “Advanced Life Support” belong to NDoH and we must consult them before using such terms (what about AHA and their use of those terms…?) The curricula only used those terms in the context of career articulation (i.e. not course content) but still, that’s an odd thing to say in my opinion.
He implied the word “emergency” kind of belongs to the HPCSA and they must intervene if it is used. I searched the National Health Act of 2003 and the Health Professions Act 1974 on the gov.za site and Ethical Rules Of Conduct For Practitioners Registered Under The health Professions Act, 1974 as posted on the HPCSA website and these documents do not protect or ring fence the word “emergency” for HPCSA. Maybe another document does? I welcome any feedback or correction on this.
I must quickly just add that when I owned an IT company (before Lime Green) I had a legal encounter with Intel Corporation over use of a word in my company name. I conceded to Intel’s very scary lawyers (because I was in fact wrong, and who on earth wants to fight with Intel Corporation) but in that legal process I learned some things about names. Intel used this example: If you are selling apples, you cannot call yourself “Apple” and prevent others from using the name. You can call yourself “Apple” and protect that name if you are selling computers though. Because the word “Apple” is not descriptive of computers. In short, you cannot trademark or protect a word that is objectively descriptive of the thing you are selling. On the face of it the use of the word “emergency” to describe a course about emergency first aid seems similar. But that’s business and this is academia…
Going back to the issue of parties coming after the fact: During the closing of the meeting Champa Gopal at HWSETA thanked HPCSA for attending, and in that thank you mentioned that HWSETA have tried to work with the HPCSA many times but it has been difficult to mobilise them, so she is thankful that that they attended. I wonder if HPCSA could have come to the party earlier instead of about twenty months after the canvassing phase.
Other comments were made by private persons after this meeting, and very few are in support of HPCSA’s intervention on the title changes and their rigidity on it (and the affect it has). But also about their general conduct. I then googled reviews of HPCSA, SANC, and SAIOSH to get an idea of how the public sees these three professional bodies. HPCSA is rated by far lowest of these bodies with 1.7 stars from nearly 500 reviews. Much lower than SANC. I will admit this is a very crude way to gauge performance of a body with such responsibility though.
Is the low rating because they are bound by a duty to patient safety and make hard decisions? Removing oxygen treatment from first aid SP230803 seems an unpopular decision but stems from concern for patient safety. So maybe it is just about making hard decisions. Or do the public have a point in actively going online to give such low reviews? I guess one would have to go read those reviews and investigate each case.
