By Haruna Aliyu Usman, Kebbi
Already weak or absence of funding is taking a huge tool on poor patients left with no choice than to patronise public hospitals neglected by states and central government in Nigeria.
Poor Nigerian patients struggle with common curable ailments amid ceaseless medical tourism by those whose responsibility is to fix the ailing health sector.
As the bare truth lays before our eyes as we watch helplessly with no hope in sight, the nation’s precarious situations became aggravated by professional rivalry between nurses, doctors and other health practitioners in charge of our hospitals across the country.
The no longer hidden professional rivalry brewing in public hospitals put the poor patients in a tight corner and a heavy dark storm that may not rain as they throng public health facilities.
Professional rivalry birthed lingering battle for supremacy, an experienced nurse see himself or herself equivalent to a Doctor who just completed his MBBS forgetting that the duration of studies and training is not same, making team work hard as patients caught in the cross fire groan amid needless medical face off.
As a lay man, I know that their job description differs and clearly spelt out but what could be the problem? Is it the training nurses get in school or are they driven by personal ego leading to the neglect of their primary duties as healthcare givers?
Unconfirmed reports alleged that doctors in the wards maltreat nurses and don’t see them as partners in progress.
This perhaps fuels hatred and ignites supremacy battle. Inasmuch as doctors remain heads of hospitals, their work is incomplete without the nurses, lab scientists and other complementary health professionals.
However, the solutions lies in the hands of the professionals themselves who must draw a line between their jobs and their personal ego driven by their training and their chosen profession.
Hospitals will become ghost towns without patients who already resorted to accessing healthcare services at chemist and medicine stores where they get best social and medical attention due to the unsavoury attitudes of healthcare givers in public hospitals.
Doctors, nurses and other health practitioners must end the unnecessary ego display to prevent untimely deaths.
Personally, I will advocate for a legislation against professional rivalry in the healthcare industry with stiffer penalities for defaulters. Patients must get value for the taxes they pay being used to pay huge salaries to doctors, nurses and complementary health professionals.
Haruna Aliyu Usman, a journalist writes from Birnin Kebbi, Kebbi state.
