CONSULTANT, My FOOT!
Everyone wants to be a doctor, yet not everyone wants to be a "medicine man". Every parent wants to have a doctor as a child, to be called Mama Doctor, Papa Doctor; even if such child is actually a(n unlicensed) patent medicine dispenser. Yes, ours is a society of vanities, so that even the dumb politician pays (for his credentials) to be doctored– not nursed. And now that "doctor" has become a dime a dozen, they have set eyes on Consultant.
It all started many years ago when other health students were taught that Medical Students were no better than them, that they had all it took to compete with us and displace us, that the ELEMENTARY human anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, pathology, paediatrics, obstetrics and/or gynaecology that Medical Doctors taught their forebears to upgrade them from Diploma holders to BSc carriers are enough armament to fight us. So much for gratitude!
They were told that they are the generational ones, as against the previous, orthodox, ones. They were told to give us hell. And why shouldn't they? After all, knowledge puffeth up– as does ignorance. They were told they could be us. Yet, if we were no better, why then be us?
The reason is obvious. It is half-knowledge. And it is all they possess. It is half, not because it did not spend so long in school, which it didn't; or because it did not have a curriculum half as comprehensive, which, again, it didn't. It is half because it cannot cure the patient; because it needs the Doctor (for it) to function optimally; because it is, as my pharmacy wife put it, la cram, la pour. And as the Yoruba observe,
Wúrúkú làá yírìnká
Gbọ̀ọ̀rọ̀-gbọọrọ làá dọ̀bálẹ̀
Kúná-kúná làá fọ́'jú
Kùùnà-kuuna làá d'étẹ̀
Ojú àfọ́-ìfọ́tán
Ìjà níí dááálẹ̀
And as with everything indoctrination, it was swallowed hook, line and sinker by every Tom, Dick and Harry– and still is. The first symptom was the protracted arguments with any medical student they could find, ranting about how we know the same things, GENERATIONAL (emphasis theirs) nurses that they (now) are; BSc nursing students more so than School of Nursing folk... The first sign was conducting their own ward rounds. And finally the chameleon has shown us its colour: Consultancy.
I have not bothered to read the numerous (read: innumerable) reasons they must have given. I am a Nigerian; I know how manifestos are written for and crammed by– la cram, la pour–; I know that the leaf dancing atop the river dances to tunes from beneath the waters. They feel that spending a lifetime with myriads of doctors makes them at least as good as one. Yet, spending a lifetime in court does not make one a Judge; for the robes do not make the Pope, neither does the hat. Or does it now? now that we have GENERATIONAL blah-blah-blah– emphasis mine.
And again, if we are no better, why do male nurses so want to be us? Could it be because they feel so out of place in an overwhelmingly feminine profession that injures their ego, that will not even allow them be midwives, or is it midhusbands? Could it be that the title Consultant will soothe such injured ego hitherto (barely) bandaged by CNO-ship? No, it is not personal– yet.
He who comes to Equity must come with clean hands, and not protect their own interests, their own traditions, while they fight others' status quo: Nurses, for example, hold onto their tradition that midwifery is the exclusive domain of females; how then can they protest our tradition that Consultancy is the exclusive reserve of Doctors? Shall we talk about pharmacists, technologists, and whoever else waka come?
Personally, I do not mind having C. Nurses, Pharmacists, Technologists, or whoever else waka come. Already, na the whole world sabi say no be only Doctors waka come. Plus, eventually there will be only one Consultant, and that will be the one that always was: us. Yet have I found myself wondering if they just have hidden agenda, if coveting our Consultancy a step toward much more sinister objectives!
So that I fear for the consequences of this theft. I fear for our society. I fear for posterity. For our society is one where every chemist shop is a hospital, where "doctors" are seen, injections given and abortions done; where everyone working in a hospital is a Doctor, even a brown-uniformed orderly (that instructed one patient to X-ray his infant's testicles; and another, his wife's pregnancy; yes, I said X-RAY, not ultrasound); where a Nurse forgets a tight tourniquet on a neonate for so long that she nearly ruins his arm; where Pharm D is misconstrued to be a means of turning pharmacy students into Medical Doctors as against PhD-holding pharmacists. Alas, everyone wants to be a Medical Doctor, even when they say we are no better!...
No, this is not to say Doctors are perfect; we are only a lot safer. I for one have been in Medical School for 9 years and I'm finally in final year! Na beans? All so I can be a lot safer; abegi just leave ASUU out of it. If I had read Nursing for instance, even at BSc level, I would be a lot more than I am: I would have been in the Civil Service for some four years, I should be a Professor by now! Yet am I still here saying Yes, Ma to even nurses I am older than and way better than, saying Sorry, Ma to nurses that were in SS-what when I was already in Med School. Abegi, no provoke me o!
Sentiments aside, If our purpose of working in the Health Sector is the wellbeing of the patient, how does the (over bloated ego of the) C. Nurse/Pharmacist/Technologist help the mission, other than creating the proverbial two-captains-in-a-ship?– and we all know how that ends.
And it is in this spirit that I salute the ongoing NMA strike action. It is not at all sentimental; it is not to show the superiority complex that Doctors are said to have; it is not to display that
we are gods on earth
that they say we are
bearing in hands the powers of life and death
that we actually do bear;
it is to verify what the others have said.
They have said that Doctors are no big deal. They have said they can do our work. They have even said they are more important. Well, this is Nigeria: all talk and no walk. Or can they walk the talk? Can they admit patients? Can they manage patients on their own, or even together sef? Can they discharge patients? Whatever happened to 'Nurses own the wards but Doctors own the patients'?
Yet that will not be all: They have eyes on the position of Chief Medical Director. Being Permanent Secretaries of Ministries of Health is not enough, they want to run hospitals and own them. So they can kill unsuspecting masses– like they already do in the chemist shops cum abortion centres some of them run, even orderlies?
Yet this is past nipping in the bud: they have become an undying hydra-headed monster; cutting off a head, an ambition, only brings two in its place!
Oh, where are the eyes of Medusa?
Ayokunle Ayk Fowosire.
Sagamu.
And peradventure my position is yet ambiguous, nurses own the wards, techs own the labs and Doctors own the patients. Which is the greatest?: wards, labs or patients?; which would YOU rather be?
Abegi, anyone that wants to be a Consultant (and particularly Chief Medical Director) should enrol in a Medical School o jare; JAMB is yet conducting UTME. And when you don't make that annoyingly high score, don't quit, don't go to School of Nursing or School of Health, keep writing JAMB every year. Trust me; you will get in– eventually...
And by the time you have finally wriggled out of Med School and Residency having failed many an exam, you will have understood why many a parent screams Praise the Lord at Inductions into the medical profession, and why Chief Medical Director remains the exclusive reserve of Doctors.
And only then can you truly be a Consultant– without My FOOT!