Hospital gets new nursing manager

Francilene Baartman, seated centre, is the new senior nursing manager at Tygerberg Hospital.

Tygerberg Hospital has a new nursing services matron, Francilene Baartman, from Durbanville.

She took up the post at the beginning of the month and is responsible for 2& 489 staff, including nurses, clerks and cleaners.

Ms Baartman, 50, grew up in Ceres but moved to Cape Town to study nursing.

She completed her diploma in midwifery, community health and psychiatry at Nico Malan Nursing College, in 1992, and did advanced studies in primary health care and nursing management at Stellenbosch University over the years.

She worked at Mowbray Maternity, Tygerberg, Kraaifontein and Karl Bremer hospitals.

The plight of the downtrodden, she says, is close to her heart.

“I care about people, which makes it easy for me (in my work),” she said.

Ms Baartman said she would be navigating some exciting changes in a health-care system that now prioritises primary health care.

She tries to walk the wards as often as possible to experience what staff deal with daily and “provide leadership visibility”.

In her job as nursing head at Karl Bremer, she managed 580 nurses, clerks and cleaners, now she’s doing the same at Tygerberg, “but on a much bigger scale”.

Ms Baartman is a mother of two, Peter, 20, and Ingrid, 18, who are both students.