The above was a comment of a brand new lawyer on one of my profile’s posts.
I think he’s referring to the Monthly salary doctors earn during their house jobs as a “benefit” from Nigerian government, or may be the poor salary structure that is causing the frustrated doctors flee abroad . I will address this misleading comment and try to appeal to the conscience of the society to critically look at the above comment if it was actually fair to those who have sacrificed the most important part of their youthful age learning how to save lives.
Doctors go through rigorous, sometimes excruciating screening to get to medical schools in the first place. While most Courses of study demand cut-off marks of 180-200 to secure admission slots in the universities, doctors had to score between 250-300 and above to be admitted. Many got above 240 out of 400 scores in JAMB but were not admitted. They would go home, study harder and try again the following year. There is a need to have doctors in societies and the simple fact that admission process is made difficult “pissed off” many students who also would have loved to become doctors.
Those who are determined to get it are the few who were ready to sacrifice their time, money and sleeps. Some lose years trying again and again while their peers were already in school with lower scores and moving on to higher classes with some graduating before you even make it to med school. Eventually, you are in Medical school and now in the first year, taking courses in the faculty of Basic sciences. You are made to know, other students from other departments taking the same courses with you, may fail and carry over the course to another level, but if you fail any of the same courses, you are thrown out of Medicine before you will even see your results pasted on the board.
You get scared and complain among your friends in other departments. “Are you not the one that chose to be a doctor?”, They mock you and you all laugh it off. True to promise first year comes to an end and 20 of the 100 members in your set were yanked off, for missing the pass mark for Trigonometry mathematics exams by 1,2 or 3 marks. They are withdrawn while students from other departments that missed the marks by 15 to 20 were asked to carry it over to another level. They promoted them to 200 level while you go back home to dust materials for the next JAMB, or if your school shows you mercy, you are allowed to start another course entirely from 100 level again.
Those who made it to 200 level are now addressed as medical students proper, taking courses in three major departments of Anatomy, Physiology and Biochemistry. You have 2 years to learn what other students are expected to know within 4 years. You now combine 3 of these courses that would take 12 years to learn separately, and would have to write exams in them after the next two years. Again, while non-medical students taking the courses have their pass marks set at 40%, your own pass mark is set at 50% and you don’t have any opportunity for a “carry over” still.
Other students go on semester breaks but you are told you don’t have that luxury. Your “cross over exams” is near and you know your fate dangles in the air. External examiners will be brought from any of Nigerian universities to assess you on what you are supposed to have known (Not what you have been taught). By the time you are completing year three and crossing over to the Teaching hospital, you realised 45 members of your initial classmates have been withdrawn with some having first class grades in their new departments. But your course isn’t classified, you must always try to pass or eventually go back home.
You now enter year four we call Clinicals. You are told a session here is 18months or one and half years without break. Even your sessions from 200 level has always been a 12 calendar month… But now you will spend a year and half in 400 level to study Pharmacology and pathology. Pharmacology is a course taking 5 years for non-medical students. But you must learn and absorb enough information there in the next 18months. You will combine it with Pathology that is even heavier and more expansive than Pharmacology. A point of no-return, you read or die trying. You must murder sleep at some point, otherwise the sweet home will swiftly beckon.
You ask your seniors, “how does this work?” They tell you there is an easy routine to follow if you must survive and it goes like this ; Wake up as early as possible, get to class at least by 8am, attend Pathology lecture from 8am to 10am, go for ward round between 10am -3pm, stay behind to clerk your patients between 3pm-4pm when ward round is over. Go for pharmacology lecture between 4pm-6pm, attend tutorials between 6pm to 8pm, go for Call in accident and emergency unit between 8pm -11pm. If you get back to your hostel between 11pm and 12am, try to revise both your pharmacology and pathology lectures before sleeping and remember these heavy notes are just your guides or the bone as we call it, you must dig into those voluminous textbooks to put flesh to the bones. Examiners don’t limit questions to class notes you know? Then make sure you wake up early for a repeat cycle tomorrow. You take a mental stock of the routine and realise there won’t be a break from 8am to11pm and you remember the part that says you should also read on getting to your hostel. Your heart skips a beat.
You call this easy routine? Yes, the tougher option is to pile up notes, miss activities, fail and be ruptured. That you have a year and half to spend in this class turns out to be a nightmare. You begin to have self doubts and silently questioning your self about your past academic performances before entering medical school. All the glamours of well ironed lab coats, Stethoscope dangling on your neck and all other appendages you attach to be identified as a future doctor, have now vanished from your outlook, daily you are being sent away from class for not putting on a neck tie, a labcoat and forgetting to bring your stethoscope to the ward rounds.
A year is now gone and, while you have another 6 months to complete your level 4, a friend you started together with,but studying a different course tells you a date for their convocation has been released. He uploads his pictures in graduation regalia and you now remember people actually graduate from university. Your hope is renewed, it will soon be your turn in few years. Six months later, your friend visits you with his NYSC uniform in your hostel and you say to yourself “It’s a mater of time” .The time you refer to now, is over two years ahead. Now rounding off your fifth year and your friend told you he’s already employed and doing well. He comes around and drops a few cash for you to manage.
You now smell graduation in the next one year but the. ASUU strike is here again, Your lecturers say they can’t hold lectures but clinical activies continue. You can’t move on but at the same time can’t go home. 4 months of ASUU crises is over and the NMA strike replaces it. You will have lectures but not Clinical activities…going forwards, you have lost another 6months to various strikes. You are exhausted and getting hopeless. You imagined if studying medicine is even worth it in the first place.
Some of your colleagues have gone into depression while others don’t care again on whatever happens to them eventually. A colleague simply left the training without being withdrawn. He fled and tried to cut contacts with all his friends that could persuade him not to waste the 6 years already spent trying to be a doctor. Now you are finally graduating and many of your friends that had carry overs in many departments 7 years ago stormed your induction venue with their cars, wives and kids. Hey! It is not yet Uhuru!
Your profession now demands another one year of intensive training, where you will put all your theoretical knowledge to practice under supervision and guidance of senior doctors. You will work as a doctor, giving first consultation to patients, clerking them, examining them, suggesting investigations and medications that your consultant will assess and modify or ratify. You will also do some minor procedures such as taking deliveries, repair of lacerations and assisting some surgeries. This is a full year program without a break again. For this, the government will pay you less than 200K for the first time as a qualified doctor working in a health facility. This is called House job Salary.
Some Law students, in my university days, use to say they also deserve a similar package. They argue, their training is also 5 years and they were supposed to be paid in law schools like Medical interns. They simply forget their course that is run on semester basis is not like Medicine that is run on seasonal basis. A semester course is 6 months of active learning. They had 3 or 2 months of semester breaks while doctors move from one posting to another with only weekend breaks in-between. Many have argued Medicine should be spread over a period of 10years to reduce the pressure of academic burdens that overwhelms medical students.
With the 18months of year 5 in med school, Doctors spend 6 and half years in most universities and this I the typical story of a student that had it smooth from start to graduation. While doctors work and contribute to patients health care during house job, and therefore entitled to be paid by government, lawyers in law schools are in a different dimension. So the comparison is grossly out of place.
A lawyer saying doctors contribute little or nothing to the society is at best, a ridiculous and malicious comment. Doctors are among the professionals offering selfless services to society. A member of the society can meet a doctor on the road and complain of some symptoms, he then asks him to prescribe drugs for him to buy, this, thousands of doctors do freely daily in Nigeria without asking for a consultation fees. Many of our friends innundate our DM for such favours time to time and we don’t hesitate to help. The very spirit of sacrfice and selflessness that made us endure the pains of medical school still continues to make us helps such kind of people.
Can this be said of Lawyers generally? Meet a lawyer on the road and lay a complain of a man trying to grab your property, the best he will do is to give you his complimentary card or phone number to come to his office and treat the matter officially, of course, you don’t expect him to offer such service free of charge. You see the secretary first in the office and pay consultation first or thereafter. How exactly are the lawyers rendering selfless services to the society. That lawyers, who would do everything to commercialize their engagements with members of the society now say doctors contribute nothing to the same society is ill-concieved.
Lawyers are even told medical field is a gold mine for them where they could make life fortunes in medical legal cases by sueing doctors or hospitals on behalf of patients. Some lawyers now a days even loitre around in big hospitals, reading faces of patients coming out and asking them if they are not satisfied with the services doctors render to them. They offer to sue hospitals on their behalf and claim damages that would be shared by them in percentages. This is an extent some lawyers now go to instigate the society against this who have sacrificed their life time to help them.
The same society hasn’t been just to doctors in actual fact. People, who will want to be given free consultation on phone or treated at little or no cost, are the same people that will hike the price of commodity when a doctor shows up in the market to buy. This I have experienced several times and other doctors will have the same story to tell.This same society will expect a doctor to donate more than others when fund is being raised for a social project or their personal events.
This same society will take side with government when doctors ask for better working conditions or a reasonable pay and allowances. The same society that blames a doctor for being too stingy because he can’t bear the burden of several calls for assistance coming to him from families, friends and acquaintances.The same people who looked at the “miserable” lives of medical students on university campuses and said ” Oh boy! I don’t envy you at all o”
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