“Scrapping off of Mathematics in nursing, to provide opportunity to more capable students” -Dr Mombeshora

By Andile Mvundla

10.04.24

Minister of health and childcare Dr Douglas Mombeshora says the scrapping off of Mathematics as one of the required subjects for nurse training in the country, will provide an opportunity for citizens who have the capacity and capabilities of succeeding in the medical field by adopting science subjects such as chemistry as one the key subjects required for one to venture into the medical field.

This comes after the Ministry of Health and Childcare, recently implemented notable revision to the nurse qualification criteria with the recent changes in the rules, said to have eliminated the necessity for candidates to have passed O-level mathematics, which has long been a requirement for the nursing profession.

Speaking during the post cabinet briefing yesterday, Minister of Health and Childcare Dr Douglas Mombeshora said they are looking to retain science subjects and English as key subjects to do nursing, saying that Mathematics is not a necessity in the medical training field.

“We know that mathematics is a subject that has not been passed well in the country and we have a lot of people who possess the skillset in the medical field getting disadvantaged by a subject that lacks relevance to the nursing training which has led to the ministry, retaining science subjects such as chemistry as the key subjects into going into nursing,” said Dr Mombeshora.

Dr Mombeshora added that they will keep on reviewing different policies as a way to recruit more willing people into the field while also making reliable changes in different disciplines to make medical training affordable and accessible to every citizen in the country.