I think people need to be informed; Nigerian Doctors are very poor! and when compared to their counterparts in neighbouring countries like Ghana, it makes it worse. At the moment, Nigeria might not be the best place to thrive.
There are two things that determines variation in life; genetics and environment. In this case – the medical profession – our environment plays a major role in its reckless abandon.
A medical officer in Nigeria receives a pay at a range of #300 to #800 per hour, averagely at #500 per hour (after all the investments into becoming and remaining a medical doctor in such a handicapped state). A morning shift typically runs between 8am to 5pm and you get to work Mondays through Fridays with alternate weekends in a private setting at the very least. If you are lucky to get a job in a general hospital, the least you can worry about is job security. Night shifts, on the other hand, runs from 5pm to 8am, depending on your agreement with the management and the protocol posed. This is about 15 hours and in most hospitals, this is still calculated within the range of #300 to #500 per hour and an average of #400 per hour.
I once applied for a job who after discussing payment plans, the Medical Director (MD) decided to pay #80,000 in a month. This is for all the work done from Monday to Friday and alternate weekends. Mind you this weekend spans through 8am Saturday morning to 8am on Monday morning – 48 hours straight, Madness!
Imagine the professional insult! And this is coming from a doctor to another doctor.
This abject professional catastrophe comes from a baseline of a country where no government body cares about the health sector yet high expectations are impinged. To confer this, a doctor working just one shift earns from #100,ooo to #200,000 maximum in a month, without removing transport, feeding and miscellaneous bills.
In-short, for a Doctor in the private health sector to “ball” in Nigeria, s/he must be running at least two shifts in one or two hospitals. This is bad. In the general (public) sector, the pay is upgraded. However, the twist comes from employment. The management will rather pest on the sanity of the minor work bodies than to create room for more workforce. At the end, what you see is a Doctor attending to 50 patients per shift; and this is just outpatients alone, excluding emergencies and inward patients.
The ratio of doctor to patient per year in Nigeria is 1: 2753 as against WHO standard of 1:600 patients. This is approximately five(5) times the standard for the most terrible of all professional pay all over the world. And despite this professional hardship, people – Nigerians – would still make comments that “doctors are not nice”, tell me, how would they?
Based on the logistics of things you are now aware of, how do you expect a sane mind to work well under such inhumane environment? Mind you, hungry lawyers are hanging around the hospitals like roaches in crevices, ready to prey or already preying on any doctor that by chance or duress becomes unstable… Some of us be rue the day we chose to study medicine in Nigeria.
About Author:
Dr. Odulaja A. O. is a Medical practitioner, passionate about life itself as an unending adventure with interest in Neurosurgery and photography. He also has fast fingers for writing and plays the guitar for leisure and professionally.
