Training for a brighter future

From sponsorships to internships, Mediclinic develops young talent and helps maximise their career opportunities.

Investing in digital skills

Today, the healthcare industry is rapidly evolving and the scope for digitally driven solutions and enhancements is limitless. Data is fundamental to these potential transformations, and to this end Mediclinic is supporting WeThinkCode (WTC), a cutting- edge software development academy that offers tuition-free education to young people who want to learn coding.

Students receive an NQF level 5 SETA qualification after two years, and have a clear pathway to being employed as junior- level software developers. The programme is available in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Durban. “Mediclinic chooses to support the WTC academy because it gives unemployed South African youth an opportunity to develop sought-after digital skills,” says Megan Buhagiar, Senior Learning & Development Manager, Mediclinic Southern Africa. “In so doing, we also support SA’s information technology (ICT) sector by creating new talent pools of work-ready software developers.

“In 2022, Mediclinic sponsored 25 learners at a total cost of around R2.5 million and we’ll continue to support WTC in 2023. We act as a host employer for the internship element of the WTC programme.

“We also plan to sponsor youth skills development in other tech streams, such as data analytics. We want to create diverse talent pipelines across various disciplines to ultimately enable a thriving, diverse workforce at all levels.”

Internships for graduate students

Interns support the creation of a diverse talent pipeline into entry-level roles in the business. “They also enable Mediclinic employees to give back in terms of time, resources and expertise,” explains Buhagiar. “This is geared towards developing young talent and supporting those youth who might otherwise struggle to get workplace experience to become more marketable and employable. “Offering graduate internships in non-clinical fields is still a new initiative at Mediclinic, but we plan to evolve and refine this. We host interns from across the country, wherever there’s a Mediclinic facility, and draw interns from a range of colleges and tertiary institutions.”

Mediclinic currently supports interns in the fields of architecture, and industrial and organisational psychology, with plans to expand into other disciplines in 2023.

“We’ve also hosted Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) work-integrated learning interns for several years. In 2023, we’re hosting more than 50 interns and have expanded our support to Corporate Office and all our hospitals,” says Buhagiar.

EPC Practitioner internships are being offered as part of the Energy Auditing Internship Programme, which is run by the EWSETA and the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) Sub-Sahara Africa Region. The internships were initiated by our Mediclinic Infrastructure team in support of our sustainability strategy and goals. On the clinical side, Mediclinic also offers annual positions for pharmacy interns, which feeds into the pharmacy talent pipeline.

Learnerships for people with disabilities (pwd)

Mediclinic hosted 81 learnerships for People with Disabilities (PWDs) in 2022. It’s aiming for similar enrolment figures in 2023/24. “While we may not necessarily increase our upcoming intakes in terms of numbers, we want to ensure a quality experience for the learners we support through their learnership journey and towards permanent employment roles,” Buhagiar says. “This year, we’ve offered the top-performing students from the 2022/23 cohort the opportunity to continue their studies by progressing to the next NQF level learnership.”