Newly qualified doctors in South Africa have to choose where to do their community service or internship — often from a list of unfamiliar hospitals, with only a few days to decide, and no easy way to compare their options.
DocPicks was built to make that choice easier.
It pulls together public research on hospitals across South Africa — things like location, lifestyle factors, and the medical services and accreditations each site offers — and turns it into a simple map and shortlisting tool. You can browse the free public version to get a feel for your options, or unlock the personalised version, which lets you weight what matters most to you and get a ranked shortlist built around your own priorities.
DocPicks isn't affiliated with the National Department of Health, the HPCSA, the CMSA, or any university. It's an independent, doctor-facing tool, built and maintained by one person, based in South Africa.
Questions, feedback, or spotted something wrong? Get in touch at hello@docpicks.com.
DocPicks scores each hospital on a set of factors grouped into two categories: Lifestyle (amenities, coastal access, outdoor recreation, rent, town quality, and your Province Preference) and Medical (things like accredited services and specialities on offer). Each factor gets a score out of 10, and the factors are weighted and combined to build your overall shortlist — with your own weighting, if you've unlocked the personalised version.
Every score comes with a confidence level, where we have one. Rather than quietly building uncertainty into the number itself, each score is shown alongside a confidence rating — High, Medium, or Low, where recorded — so you can see at a glance how solid the underlying data is, not just what the score says.
Missing data is left out, not treated as a zero. If we don't have reliable information for a particular factor at a particular hospital, we exclude it from that hospital's score rather than scoring it as if the answer were "none" or "worst." The remaining factors are reweighted so the overall score still reflects what we actually know, not a penalty for a data gap.
Medical data is split into two tiers, and we keep them clearly separate:
The aim throughout is simple: show you what we know, how sure we are of it, and where it came from — so you can weigh it yourself rather than take a single number on faith.
Spotted something that looks wrong or out of date? Tell us at hello@docpicks.com — we review and correct reported issues.