As Groote Schuur Hospital celebrates its 80th birthday this year, CPUT’s Department of Medical Imaging and Therapeutic Sciences (MITS) is reflecting on its long and proud association with the world-renowned academic hospital.
The hospital was officially opened in January 1938 and was where Chris Barnard and his team performed the world’s first ever heart transplant operation.
Aladdin Speelman, Head of the MITS Department, says Radiography training started at Groote Schuur in the early 1960s under the auspices of the then Department of Health.
The training was later transferred to the former Cape and Peninsula Technikons in 1980.
With the rationalisation of the higher education landscape in the early 1990s, Radiography training was transferred in 1991 to Peninsula Technikon only, with the academic offering and clinical training still taking place on the Groote Schuur and Tygerberg campuses.
In 2014 the MITS Department was established, which resulted in the four hospital-based Radiography programmes being moved to the Bellville Campus.
“CPUT radiography teaching staff work closely with the respective GSH clinical staff in the Departments of Diagnostic Radiography, Ultrasound, Nuclear Medicine and Radiation Oncology overseeing the supervision of students undergoing work integrated learning. Our close symbiotic relationship allows us to train world class radiographers and ultra-sonographers. CPUT greatly values the expert clinical teaching and research support provided by Groote Schuur Hospital for our undergraduate as well as postgraduate Radiography programmes,” says Speelman.
CPUT staff members are still responsible for clinical demonstrations, tutorials and clinical assessments of students which take place in the various clinical departments at the hospital. “We trust that our relationship with Groote Schuur will remain as strong and that the hospital will go from strength to strength.”
