Exploring diverse career paths in nursing

A nursing career offers various paths, from direct patient care to leadership roles, infection prevention & control, coding and patient safety. Four women share their career journeys.

Charity Ngope
Deputy Nursing Manager, Specialised Units
Mediclinic Nelspruit

"I always say I didn’t choose nursing; nursing chose me. I have childhood memories of visiting family members in the hospital and being intrigued by what happened when the curtains were drawn around a patient. I come from a disadvantaged background in Barberton, Mpumalanga, and was awarded a Mediclinic bursary to study nursing way back in 2003.

“During our first day of orientation, I fainted after seeing a bedridden patient’s wound due to a septic sacral pressure sore. I told my mother I never wanted to go back. More than two decades later, I am now the Deputy Nursing Manager for the Specialised Units at Mediclinic Nelspruit!

“My role involves maintaining the quality standards in the high care, ICU, and emergency care departments, making sure they meet their expected patient outcomes and follow quality guidelines. It requires a lot of supervision, mentoring, and coaching.

“A good deputy nursing manager helps solve complex problems and works with everyone in a multidisciplinary team, including doctors, nurses, patients, the public, and support services like cleaning companies. You need strong people skills and the ability to handle conflict, as you may often mediate between managers, staff, and patients. You can’t just stay in your office; you need to be on the floor every day.

“I do leadership rounds of each department, ensuring the wellbeing of the nurses and the unit managers, I speak to the patients, and I make sure we comply with guidelines on patient safety, unit cleanliness, and documentation. My eyes are everywhere!

“However, I don’t see myself as a controlling, coercive manager. Instead, I choose to lead. I depend on others to achieve nursing goals, so I aim to collaborate with people and be a positive influence.

“ICU is my passion – it’s where my heart beats and it’s a place where miracles can happen. Some patients come in with serious medical issues, then three months later you see them walking out. That moment is so rewarding, especially when they acknowledge the care they received. It’s a priceless feeling.

“I’m currently completing an Advanced Diploma in Management Practice at the Henley Business School. I will always continue learning.”

Madelain Brits
Infection Prevention & Control (IPC) Manager
Mediclinic Medforum

“My work as an IPC manager has become more challenging over the years as the overuse of antibiotics has led to patients coming in with more drug-resistant organisms. We work hard to prevent infections, but it’s difficult to avoid them completely. Germs are always present, some patients are immuno-compromised, and infections can spread through various ways, like medical equipment and devices.

“Infections in our hospital make patients stay longer, so we try very hard to mitigate the risks. This includes keeping policies and guidelines current and working with the unit manager to ensure compliance.

“I joined Mediclinic as a newly qualified nurse in 1991. Years later, I became unit manager of the Mediclinic Medforum paediatric unit and in 2017, when the hospital expanded, I moved into my current role of Infection Prevention & Control (IPC) Manager. I didn’t want my career to stagnate, and this new position gave me the chance to learn more. It was a great opportunity to improve my skills and take my nursing career in a new direction. After completing a 10-month in-house IPC course, I enrolled for an online Postgraduate Diploma through the Infection Control Africa Network.“We need to stay on the ball with infection control because technology and organisms are always changing. We use the ICNET system, a software application that helps us track infections, manage outbreaks, and oversee antibiotic use. It stores detailed information - like patients’ blood results, cultures, procedures, and medications - giving us a holistic clinical picture. The system alerts us if there are potential infections and event clusters. We then analyse the data to find the common denominator, investigate, and take action in the nursing units.

“We constantly educate staff, work with doctors, and consult microbiologists to recommend the right antibiotic treatment if a patient has resistant infections. As an IPC manager, I make sure the latest policies are followed across the hospital – from the cleaning, the kitchen, linen rooms and laundry to the wards and operating rooms. We’re here to monitor, help, and suggest ways to prevent and control infections.”

Karen Coertzen
Clinical Coding Centre Team Leader
Mediclinic Southern Africa

“I loved working in ICU at Mediclinic Bloemfontein, but after becoming a mom in 2011, I wanted more regular hours and time with my young family. Switching to coding was a tough decision because I loved the hands-on clinical side of nursing. But in coding, you still work with patients' clinical information every day. You don’t lose your nursing skills because the patient’s journey is still there – it’s just in electronic form.

“In short, clinical coders take a patient’s diagnosis and treatment and then assign the correct codes for their medical aid scheme and for statistical purposes. We record it and check the codes using a list to ensure they’re accurate. Clinical coding is a lot more nuanced than simply assigning numbers – you need to be able to look at the full picture.

“I’m one of six team leaders overseeing 66 coders nationwide. We must be disciplined, time-conscious and accountable because we all work remotely. Our day starts at 7am when the hospitals provide us with fully scanned patient records for review following the patient’s discharge.

“Coders are assigned to a Mediclinic hospital for the day, where we do real-time coding for procedures while the patient is still in the hospital. For example, if your medical aid has approved a laparoscopic appendectomy, but your surgeon decides on an open appendectomy instead, we need to update the medical aid about the change. This helps ensure we get approvals on time.

“Apart from accuracy, consistency and attention to detail, a coder needs to be highly organised with strong analytic skills. We pore over doctors’ and nurses’ notes, lab results,

notes from physiotherapists, dietitians, radiologists and more to get a full picture of each case. Having a nursing background makes it much easier to understand the file and turn it into a clear, detailed story. This is the ‘behind the scenes of nursing’, and it’s exactly where I want to be. Every file and every new admission is unique. I genuinely love my work.”

Theo-Odra Mouton
Patient Safety &  Clinical Performance Coordinator
Mediclinic Southern Africa

“In the interest of patient safety, we focus on our employees’ psychological safety and creating a fair and supportive environment. We obviously don’t condone negligence, but we want employees to be transparent about any mistakes and oversights. If patient safety is compromised due to a lack of skills, tiredness or a straightforward mistake, we focus on providing extra training and support.

“After completing my four-year nursing degree at the University of the Western Cape, I joined Mediclinic Constantiaberg in the general surgical ward. In 2016, I was promoted to senior sister in the Emergency Centre at Mediclinic Cape Gate where I developed an interest in infection control. As more management duties were added to my job profile, I realised I wanted to move into nursing management.
“Two years before COVID-19, I became the unit manager of the general surgical unit at Mediclinic Vergelegen. Since I have asthma and was considered vulnerable, I was moved to help the patient safety manager instead of working in the ward. That's when I developed a passion for patient safety in nursing and was appointed as patient safety manager of the hospital in 2022. A few months later, the Clinical Performance Coordinator position at our corporate office became available, and I was the successful applicant.

“In a nutshell, as Clinical Performance Coordinator, I identify risks to patient safety and find the root causes of risks and adverse events. Together with unit managers, we then help the team come up with solutions to mitigate the risk. For example, if a patient falls out of bed, we assess for and treat their injuries, escalate if needed, inform the family and doctor, and report the incident to the legal department. We manage these adverse events with the nursing manager and patient experience manager. This includes learning from the event as well as sharing the learnings to prevent similar events in the future.

“Together with the patient safety managers in the hospitals, we’re responsible for identifying trends, delivering patient safety programmes, staying up to date with legislation and helping the unit managers and nursing teams to be compliant to patient safety standards and policies.

“We track key performance indicators to ensure we prevent patient harm that could be caused by adverse events such as falls, medication errors or pressure ulcers. All data is captured in a patient safety management system, and if we see, for example, that medication errors are rising in a certain nursing unit, we investigate why and address the causes soonest.

“Getting support from the larger healthcare team is important. We take action to improve clinical care, which leads to better patient outcomes.”