On Doctors and other medical professionals

The write-up on the above by Michael Afolabi published in the Nation’s Sunday newspaper of December 11, 2011, page 13 refers. I sincerely commend the writer of the article for his courage and the brilliance in the write-up. Everything in the said article was nothing but the truth.  However, I will be glad if the Editor could publish this additional information: It is only in Nigeria that Nigerian medical doctors are ego-driven. In the civilized countries of the world, health care is a team work. No health profession is superior or inferior to the other. 

A friend in the UK once sent an e-mail on the relationship between the Pathologists  who are medical doctors and the Biomedical Scientists (Medical laboratory Scientists) in Nigeria. This was what he said:

“frankly speaking, there should be no problem between Medical laboratory Scientists and the Pathologists who are medical doctors. In the setting where I work in the UK, Pathologists do not work on the bench in the laboratory. They only relate or interpret the lab results to the clinicians/physicians and give advice on the choice of drugs. They lease with the General Practitioners (GPs) and other clinicians on how best to Manage or treat the patients based on the results generated from the medical laboratory. The lab Managers run the laboratory and not the Pathologists. We normally have weekly laboratory meetings chaired by lab Manager who is a Biomedical Scientist. It is a pity that Pathologists in Nigeria do not have idea of their specific responsibility as trained medical doctors. They need to wake up and run special clinics to help patients and their fellow Clinicians and not to struggle with Medical laboratory Scientists over medical laboratory testing….. ’’

It has been said times without numbers, that hospitals in the UK, USA, Canada etc are administered by experts in Health Management-Hospital Administrators who do not belong to any of the health professions. And the health system there is excellent. This arrangement is also needed in Nigeria so as to improve health care services to the patients.  Medical doctors as Chief Executives of hospitals in Nigeria are obviously not good Administrators. The Various Directors of administration in hospitals equally lack courage and brilliance to call erring /incompetent MDs/ CMDs to order. They are merely experts in writing queries to any other health professionals who dear challenge their competence. This is quite unfortunate and is counter-productive for an effective health system.

In various universities, Heads of the various faculties or departments training students of the different  health professions such as Medicine, Medical Laboratory Science, Pharmacy, Nursing , Physiotherapy etc  are  Lecturers  who are licensed to practice their professions. Why should the headship of the various services be by Medical doctors on graduation of such students! It is high time Medical doctors in Nigeria discard their ego and embrace practices that will advance and promote quality health services to the patients.

Toyosi Y. Raheem

Yaba, Lagos.

yekeenr@yahoo.co.uk