More than 500 personnel of the National Hospital, Abuja (NHA) left its services in search of greener pastures in the last two years, its Chief Medical Director, Prof Mahmud Raji, has disclosed.
Raji told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), yesterday, in Abuja that most of them went abroad in search of better working conditions.
He said: “The way they leave is a very hurtful thing for all hospital administrators. The most pitiful and worrisome aspect of it is the amount of money the Nigerian government has invested into each of these individuals either a doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist, a physiotherapist or whoever it is that leaves.
“Sometimes, not only young people; some people have gone through the ranks with lots of experience that they could teach other people. So, Nigeria is losing so much, painfully.
“Here, we have lost a number of quite senior doctors, especially the middle cadre doctors, and the very young ones. Nurses have also left from the middle cadre and the younger ones. Some of our medical engineers are hotcakes outside and have left.”
On reasons for their departure, he said remuneration and job satisfaction had always topped the list.
“For instance, if a doctor or a nurse comes here, he or she needs to see an environment that is quite serene, quite beautiful, even to rest in a very comfortable area during their one hour break.
“At least, you are able to have something to eat, replenish your energy before you go back to the next phase of work, but usually, in our hospitals in Nigeria, we don’t have such.
“We should also look at the unsolved problem of inter-professional rivalry that also eats into people’s psyche. People should be comfortable with the next person they’re working with, be it a nurse, a physiotherapist or whoever”, he said.
Raji also said necessary equipment needed to work were not there, saying past governments had tried by taking very decisive stance on matters of health, saying the current government had also put in a lot to rejig the health sector.
On the issue of inter-professional rivalry in the healthcare profession, he said though it existed in other institutions, at NHA, there had been very harmonious relationships.
