This write-up is from a Nigerian doctor to your LIB fans who responded to your post about the doctor that “forgot” a pad in a lady. What I think happened is that the woman had a pad placed to absorb the vaginal bleeding after the surgery. The pad was placed in the vagina and left there for two days, at which point the woman left her hospital bed for the doctor’s office to complain about it. Whatever the case, leaving that pad there for 2 days was an oversight on the team’s part whether the patient was informed to remove it or not, and it could have led to infections and other complications. For that, the doctor and nurses were at fault no matter the reason.
But what I want to address is the
general hostile attitude of the public towards doctors over reasons such as: doctors
are proud and arrogant, they love money, they are incompetent, etc. I can’t address
all these points, but I’d love to address the obvious expectation of the Nigerian
public that doctors should, in fact, be PERFECT.
Let’s start from the beginning of
a doctor’s career: the training. Nigerian doctors are trained in the same
Nigerian universities that produce virtually-intact illiterates. I mean graduates
that cannot speak or write good English or spell words correctly (like most of
those that comment on your blog or on Facebook). Just a few weeks ago, we gave
a “corper” a form to fill and where she was to fill her “sex” after her name
and age, she wrote “about twice a week” instead of “female.” Wow! And then she
proceeded to bombard us with spelling and grammatical errors, yet she was
teaching in a primary school. A graduate! Most Nigerian graduates cannot defend
what they claim to have spent 4-5 years studying because of the low quality of
education they receive. But the Nigerian doctors trained in these same universities
are expected to sparkle like their foreign counterparts? Seriously?
Let’s go to the issue of
competence. A lot of doctors do great things every single day. I mean, a lot! But
when a few doctors out of the thousands in the country do something wrong, it’s
generalized. What about other professionals in Nigeria? Take engineers, for
example. How are the roads in our country? I mean the ones that have been
repaired about 5 times with billions of naira and still have gaping pot holes? What
about the buildings and bridges that collapse all over the country? Or the road
drains that don’t lead anywhere and only store stagnant water and garbage? Or the
electric poles and street lights that fall on their own? Why does no one scream
about the incompetence of our engineers? What about the bankers that steal from
clients’ accounts? Every field inevitably has “bad eggs;” you don’t generalize what
you experience with one case to every one!
Now, most of the government
hospitals your government gives us to work in lack the basic resources needed
for proper health care. They either don’t have equipment, or have
non-functioning or out-dated ones - like X-ray, CT, and ECG machines built in
the 80’s. Laboratory reagents and machines needed to carry out basic tests for
diagnosis are usually lacking; of course, advanced tests are only read about in
medical textbooks. Some expensive private labs I know send patients’ blood and
other samples to S/Africa! We, the doctors, are not responsible for providing
these equipment or paraphernalia; the government is. Yet when you come to the
hospital and we are essentially handicapped, you’d say “these doctors don’t
even know what they are treating or doing.” Even ordinary syringes, IV cannulas,
urethral catheters etc are scarce commodities; it’s in Nigeria that syringes
are prescribed with drugs for patients. As for the drugs? Even the “out-dated” drugs
that were discovered decades ago that we still use (even though our foreign
counterparts have abandoned them) are not readily available. Modern drugs can easily
be gotten in South Africa or Egypt but not Nigeria. How then would the Nigerian
doctor be able to make that same diagnosis that those doctors make? Or even
treat you? Or treat the most basic of health issues? My people, don’t just
shout. Think!!!
Should I talk about the staff
shortage? Do you know that in developed countries it is illegal to work for a
particular number of hours on a stretch? Even for company drivers, not to talk
of doctors. It is because when you rest after some work, you function better later
on. I once worked in a delicate unit in a teaching hospital where I was on call
for one month straight! I would work in the morning from 8am – 4pm and then
start my call from 4pm to 8am the next day (while most of you were in clubs or
with your families). For one full month! Shebi I’m a machine? Or a slave? And I
don’t want to see my family because they are masquerades, right? And then one night,
while I was on the 5th floor attending to a delicate patient we performed
surgery on earlier in the day, they started calling me at Accident/Emergency (ground
floor) for an emergency case that just rushed in for my unit. The same me that had
to attend to this patient who needed immediate attention? The same me that
stood all day in the theatre? The same me that hadn’t had a good night’s rest
for almost 2wks? I didn’t have 4 hands, 8 legs or 10 heads, so I had to hurriedly
finish with the patient upstairs and fly down there. If you were the one that
came to the A/E with a loved one, you would say “the doctor wasn’t even around”
or “the doctor was sleeping” and you would start screaming at me when I finally
show up. Because you’re in your own world that’s very different from mine. When
you see me unavoidably grumpy and irritable after two weeks of such calls, you
would say doctors are rude and arrogant. Or when I end up forgetting something or
doing something wrong cos of how over-worked I’ve been, you would scream
murder! It’s depressing. I didn’t choose to work like that; I was forced to! You
want to sue? I’m looking for who to sue too!
I have a lot to say, but let me
stop and summarize: the Nigerian system as a whole is riddled with corruption
and all its consequences. Nothing works, nothing is as it should be. The health
care sector is part of the Nigerian system; you can’t have other sectors like
power, agriculture, economy, judiciary, even foreign affairs (remember Morocco?)
in a depressing mess and expect the health care sector to be all shiny and rosy
simply because life is involved; the same issues affecting the others also
affect it. It’s true that there are cases of malpractice now and then (which
happen even in developed countries), but the main issue in most cases is the
poor health care structure we have to work with. Until we can get our leaders
to see such important things as important, you’ll just keep complaining. And until
our leaders are constitutionally forced to send their children to Nigerian
universities and seek medical care in Nigerian government hospitals (which
would make them put things in order), nothing will change.
Thank you.
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