Resident doctors have gone too far

The association decided to downplay the hallowed Hippocratic Oath and place the nation under siege unless it meets all their demands. But what are the demands, to start with?They want the federal government to fully implement the revised programme for residency training, to include one year overseas posting.They are also demanding the immediate rectification of […]

The association decided to downplay the hallowed Hippocratic Oath and place the nation under siege unless it meets all their demands. But what are the demands, to start with?
They want the federal government to fully implement the revised programme for residency training, to include one year overseas posting.
They are also demanding the immediate rectification of the challenges posed by the introduction of the integrated personnel payroll scheme, popularly called IPPIS whereby some Officers’ who are not on permanent employment were not yet captured and so not being paid yet.
The resident doctors are also demanding the immediate sack of their senior colleague, the Medical Director of Federal Medical Centre, Owerri, just as they earlier achieved such demand with the former helmsman in State Specialist Hospital, Eruwa Edo state; among others.
But the question on every rational mind is, how significant or urgent are these issues raised by NARD, as to warrant the current industrial action? The answer definitely is on the negative.
Like the health minister rightly observed recently in Abuja during his speech at the opening ceremony of a 3-day workshop for tertiary hospitals’ governing board chairmen, chief executives and directors of administration, the strike is unwarranted and misplaced, and resident doctors are ingrates to Nigerian public for taking such an action.
On one hand, I believe that the strike in a way serves the health minister right, since he was the one that ‘smuggled’ the overseas training for only doctors into the picture without regard to whether the system can bear it for now, and at the utter neglect of cognate health professions, then he should make it good to them from his purse.
This is not to suggest that the overseas exposure for health professionals, including medical doctors, is irrelevant, but in any case, it should be for fields and specialties that are not available within the country. Why go abroad to squander taxpayers’ money when the mines of knowledge at home have not been fully tapped into? Nigerian government has, over the years spent a whole lot of fortune on training and those consultants are on hand to reproduce their acquired skills in the trainees. But some of the agitators’ perception of the overseas privilege (not a right) is no more than a picnic.
But really the whole issue is just like a child holding his father by the throat to give him all he feels he needs, whether he can afford it right now or not.
Our Resident Doctors have forgotten that they are Students on training and on scholarship as well. Where on earth (if not Nigeria) do students go on strike and hold their benefactors by the jugular? This seems like an act of ingratitude. The residency programme may have to be reviewed, whereby a resident doctor is made to sign an undertaking before enrolment into the programme, as is currently being done in Lagos State.
The problem arising from integrated personnel payroll scheme is not peculiar to fresh medical graduates. The Interns in The Federal Ministry of Health, and some at National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development in 2012 were not paid during their internship year, because they fell into the period IPPIS was introduced in the ministry and agency; but they have all been paid now. It is a problem akin to all health settings that take non- permanent staff yearly and it takes time to correct. Like every newly introduced system, the challenges will be fixed.
The issue of FMC Owerri’s Medical Director should have been handled at the level of Medical Council’s inquiry and disciplinary committee rather than being blown out of proportion as to warrant a nationwide fuss.
This then takes one to the legal aspect of this matter. What locus standi has NARD to declare an industrial dispute? Is it a trade union? Are they aware of the provisions of the law over industrial disputes? Or are they above the law? As it stands now, anybody can just wake up one morning after a bad dream or a quarrel with his spouse and call for strike! In the words (rephrased) of Socrates, any education that makes you despise the principle of justice and doctrine of due process is better reviewed, because it is worse than no education at all. In societies with responsive legal systems, the individuals that made the declaration should have been tried for crime against humanity.
The NMA president and elders of the noble medical profession should persuade their junior colleagues and ask them to return to their posts without any further delay.

Oluleti wrote from Lagos <[email protected]>;