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A particular focus into one aspect of the state of health and wellbeing among WSU employees recently earned one of WSU’s academic managers a doctorate in Health Sciences during the institution’s May graduation ceremony.
Buffalo City Campus dean for the Faculty of Business Sciences Dr Cawe Novukela finally dislodged the proverbial monkey on his back after being conferred, to much fanfare, with a doctorate for his important work on a paper titled “An exploration of the effects of diabetes mellitus on burnout among WSU employees”.
“During the study, I discovered that relation between diabetes and burnout was significant. The majority of the participants who were diabetic also suffered from high levels of burnout,” said Novukela.
Quite alarmingly, his research has also revealed that there’s an emerging problem of high level of burnout among WSU employees and also a significant number of employees who are diabetic.
In his paper, Novukela attributes the grim findings to the susceptibility of the working environment to heightened levels of stress, as well as the unconducive and unresponsive working environment which doesn’t make provisions for people with diabetes.
“There is a need to educate the university community about dangers of diabetes mellitus and burnout. Programmes focusing on diabetes mellitus and burnout should be developed with immediate effect. Also, employee groups should be established to enable employees to share freely about their condition and also share knowledge of leaving with the condition,” he said.
Following his momentous achievement, Novukela said he’d be publishing no less than three articles from the study and that he’d also share his findings with the broader community of practice through participation in conferences.
Being a teacher at heart, Novukela said he’d I actively share his wealth of knowledge by supervising BTech students, and on the other hand, also teach research at levels where basic solid foundation is key so that students do not see research as a stumbling block to their future academic careers.
“I also have a wealth of management and leadership experience that can contribute to the development of our workplace, university, country and continent,” he concluded.
By: Thando Cezula
