AS THE NIGERIAN PHYSICIAN STRUGGLES WITH HIS THOUGHTS.

The Nigerian clime is beset with peculiar delimiters inherent in decayed infrastructure.....and the near-impossibility of attaining financial success without being corrupt.

The system compels you to yield to the blackmailing antics of extortionists even if you are not a bribe-taker yourself! You either compromise on personal principles (of honesty, probity and integrity) or you are destined for financial ruin!

Medicine has its own limiting effects on the propensities of the individual practitioner to reach his full potential. It mandates him to offer prompt life-saving services but is less concerned about whether he gets paid or not! The profession is so emotion-laden....so we are not just talking about the medical ethics.

When you now opt to go the honest route in societies as this, you are surely commiting yourself to a life of financial struggles.

A fine blend of all the factors stated above is a sure recipe for financial failure!

As the vicissitudes of life thus hit you as a doctor in the Nigerian setting, which counsel do you pander to? The deafening screams of the spiritualists....or the "realistic" views of the "physicalists"?

Your profession defines health as "a state of physical, mental, social and SPIRITUAL well-being but you check yourself each time you are tempted to consider the counsel of religionists who berate you to "view earthly battles as duels with powers and principalities".

Lectures in psychiatry had however ingrained in you a mindset to see such thoughts as being within the precincts of paranoia. "Well, even if paranoid, I am not psychotic because I still retain my insight", you console yourself!

But why is everyone going the "spiritual way"?, you ask yourself.

They can't all be paranoid, can they?
Hmmmm....
.....the dilemma of the Nigerian physician.....
Dr Tosin Akindele is a medical practitioner and public affairs analyst.

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Articles by Tosin Akindele