Career progression of clinical associates in Gauteng hospitals

The migration of health professionals to developed countries has resulted in major shortages of doctors and nurses in South Africa. The introduction of clinical associates was a response to the „brain drain‟ by increasing the number of healthcare providers in underserved provinces, primarily rural district health services. Clinical associates are university trained and the purpose of this interpretive qualitative study was to identify and understand factors which these mid-level health providers consider as critical in career progression within their scope of practice. One of the main findings of the research was that there is no career path for clinical associates and the main barriers were the absence of an approved scope of practice and a grade progression system applicable toother publichealth professionals. In-depth interviews were conducted to collect data and purposive sampling was used to select clinical associates, managers and university personnel who participated in this study. Key words: Career consciousness,career mobility, career orientation, career path, career progression, interprofessional collaboration, organisation socialisation, professionalisation, professional identity