@ben, Thanks again and btw,i visited your blog.Impressive i must say

@Phantom.
Thanks! It's a pet project of mine, which i've not been very diligent with. It still needs a lot of editing before i can go ahead with the books publishing.

Dont worry u'll do well

I'm right now getting my MBBS in China at Shandong University http://www.e-admission.edu.cn/college_center_user.php?id=sdu

Tuition is cheap and classes are in English. Beats med school in nigeria eh!

Please

@ mgbogo

You can be checking the following link for the kind of jobs that you may be interested in http://unjobs.org/themes/public-health They do pop up now and then.

You can also be checking the websites of the NGO's that you'd want to work with. Try USAIDSjobs and others like that. There's so many out there that you could explore.

Good luck!

Looks like the govt has finally agreed.There just might be better days to come if an HO goes home with 180k

its good to know dat doctors are gradually realisin d fact dat money matters! to give your best you have to be really motivated. the proffession requires 100% commitment to give patients quality health care. but lets not expect the governmant to give us mega pay as oil companies telecom etc. doctors cannot be treated in isolation. wat of the police, army, firemen and other civil servants? the traffic warden who stays in the rain to control trafiic deserves better pay too! what i think we should do is to over haul the entire health care system. we should make health insurance WORK. we should improve the way we care for patients. best practices should be encouraged. mediocrity should be discouraged. training and retraining should be the key word, in my opinion if we really want to have a world classhealth . system then the private sector is the way forward. health care industry is one oh the most viable in today's world. the only way the buisness man would invest in health care is if it is profitable how do we make it profitabel? we must look for new ways of doing things, we must leave conservatism and be progressive, the government has and never will never run a successful buisness which health care is! quality health care can never be trully humanitarian.

@gem, Yeah, Health insurance is the way but take a look at the mess we've made of our NHIS, were the HMO's are the lords not giving a damn bout the providers.

@gem, BTW,Who said the govt cant afford to give their docs jumbo pay?A chief judge,who is a consultants counterpart in the judiciary takes home close to 15mill per annum.Is it not the same govt?The same govt where a senator embezzles 5billion naira in a rural electrification scam or earns millions for talking nonsense at the NASS?Do they think we are not watching?Animals!

you guys can continue deceiving yourselves.

tt

Hi house,

I am a registered medical doctor. I curently work with a private hospital in Lagos. I would be very happy if i can get a better job, still in Lagos. Pls if there is any opening out there, i would be grateful. mail me at rotoye2000@yahoo.com. thank you.

Adrenaline:

you guys can continue deceiving yourselves.

exactly

@adrenaline and skyone, Lemme guess,you guys are either nurses,pharmacists or opticians, lol, Typical!

Hi,our elders have spoilt things for us,due to their selfishness,they climb to the top and throw the ladder away,GOD dey!

pls who knows how to apply for hmo jobs especially zenith ,oceanic and uba.

people help me see what is happening to we doctors.its so bad that we cant even get access to the internet.
how many teaching hospitals have internet access? look at the bankers forum ,shell new generation forum,all
filled to the brim and bubbling. whats happening to Doctors?or are we too busy to have an active forum or just
very boring people?Someone pls talk to me.

hi a new doc in the house, and dis guy wants to jand,, or go to aussie, or to the carribeans, asap, i go connect all of una later

What are your thoughts on the issue of the so called '5-star hospitals' that the govt is said to be talking about? See a link here https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-294058.32.html


Much as the concept is a good one, i still have my reservations about it.First of all, i think that the problem with the Nigerian Health sector is the lack of a proper health system in place.

I doubt that much have changed since i left Naija over 6 years ago, when we were still practicing 'cow-boy medicine'! In those days all u needed to do to open a private clinic/hospital was just to go ahead and open a private hospital! There were no clear standards to be met, no proper guidelines for clinical practice and excellence, no regulations or safeguards etc!

The 'primary care concept' though popularised by Dr Ransome-Kuti, never really kicked off. People hardly understood what primary care entailed, so nobody ensured that it did what it was supposed to do-act as the first point of call to service-users, deal with uncomplicated cases and then refer on to secondary care. The secondary care providers (i.e. the general hospitals) did not seem to understand their limitations or scope of service delivery, while the tertiary health providers (i.e. the teaching hospitals) where essentially general hospitals but for the name.  Perhaps in the last 6-7 years things have changed. But i doubt it, having visited Naija several times since then and spoken with some of my friends that i left behind.

I think that what the health sector in Nigeria needs is a system in place. The NHIS would have been a veritable strategy to drive the development of some sort of a health system. Perhaps something inbetween what is obtainable in the UK and the US. 

In the UK, there is a gradual movement in the direction of more private sector involvement with a strong role for private health insurance companies. The public health insurance provider (the NHS) remains the foundation of the health system here, but it is not quite meeting the needs of everybody. In the US, my understanding is that the system is driven by the private health insurance sector (any US based guys can help us out here).

For Nigeria, the vulnerable population (children, elderly, physically and mentally unwell, preganant women) should be covered by a public health insurance system structured on that of the UK, especially for problems that can be dealt with at primary and secondary care level. The informal and formal sector (and their families) should be able to access private health insurance for all levels of care. Putting such a structure in place would not be rocket science and would not even be as expensive as the current (lack of) system we practice!

My thinking is that the government should focus on giving us a health system. The private sector can then come in at what ever level they can and will be the ones providing us with the '5-star hospitals', if and when it is deemed necessary. The issue of salary structure, progression in training and so on would neatly be resolved once a clear system is put in place.

What are your thoughts?




Declaration if Interest: I will soon be involved in private health insurance in Nigeria.

M..

doc based in new jersey reporting for duty!!! presently in kaplan preparing for my boards!!

drossy, u said u are preparing for ur boards which i guess is the usmle? i av a few questions, in step1 in usmle what courses are u required to write, i heard its anatomy,physiology,biochemistry,pathology and pharmacology.

Boring set of people, after all these months, this board is still on page three, nawa o. Doctors need to get a life, annoying set of monkeys

@ Adrenaline,
From the two posts you've made on this forum, I get the feeling that you're not particularly in love with Doctors! I wonder why.

Anyways, my candid advice to you is that you should go get a life before you pop a vessel. And while at it, try to brush up on your manners.

@Adrenaline; From the way you are talking, i should believe you haven't got a problem which you'll need a doctor to solve. Neways, i knw at one point or another,you'll need a doctor's help and i hope it goes well for you.

On a serious note, why is this forum so-what's the word-boring?

Though the gentleman a few posts earlier raised the issue in his somewhat uncomplimentary style, the truth is that nothing is really happening here. The question is 'are we just too busy or just too uninterested in this site'? Or are there too few Doctors that use it?

Let's make suggestions on how to make this site useful for us. Information is a strategic tool for personal and collective growth. Let's share information. One suggestion is for guys to start telling us of the challenges and perhaps also the opportunties in practicing or training wherever they're located.

I'll start. Most of the information i'm about to give, i've already posted some posts above, but i suppose there's no harm in repeating myself.

In the UK at the moment opportunties for training for Overseas Doctors are very limited but do occasionally pop up here and there. Most overseas Doctors who pass the PLAB exams these days are likely to veer towards General Practice or Psychiatry, if they want to progress in their careers. For whatever reasons, the indegenous population until recently didn't choose these specialties as their first choice of career, even though the life offered during and after training in General Practice or Psychiatry is of no less quality. In fact General Practice is becoming more and more lucrative therefore making it increasingly more competitive. Whereas Psychiatry however is still burdened by the stigma of an ignorant public even here in a supposedly enlightened society. Most who get into it find the quality of life it offers (i.e. job satisfaction, work/life balance etc) to be actually very high. I wouldn't swap it for any subspecialty. But then, that's what i wanted to train in.  My enthusiasm may not be echoed by somebody who wanted to be an Orthopaedic Surgeon, for instance, but got muscled into the profession. 

The problem that Doctors coming to the UK today from overseas would have, would be in progressing beyond the basic specialist training. For General Practice its slightly different because there the training is just for 3 years, following which you get your certificate of completion of training (CCT). In other specialties, that would be you, just finishing your basic specialist (that's if you've been able to pass all your exams, which in Psychiatry is now 4 in all). Other specialisties take 5-6 years to get the CCT, following which you can get a job as a substantive Consultant and start earning mullas. Not that you can't earn mullas before then, but some people just want to be called 'Consultants'. You don't have to have finished your CCT to do locum Consultant posts though. You can stop at doing middle grade career locums or substantive specialty posts. You'd still be called a Specialist though, if that's what tickles your fancy.

This problem of not progressing to Consultant level has made the UK increasingly less attractive for people who want to become Consultants. The result is that the number of Overseas Doctors coming from places like the Indian Subcontinent, who if truth be told, form the backbone of the NHS, have dwindled over the last 2-3 years, leaving a lot of posts now unfilled. For those that are already here, what's it's created is a big market for those who want to locum and then do other things with their lives other than become a 'consultant'. Some make money from the locums and then relocate to USA where the training is just 4 years (some have negotiated 3 years). Australia, New Zealand and Canada are no longer attractive. The first two, because you'd be pushed to work somewhere in the bushes, without much opportunties for further training while Canada, being very protective of their own, you'd probably end up as a taxi driver for the rest of your life. That's if you pass the driving tests!

What else can i say? For those interested in coming to the UK to work as Psychiatrists, a profession that i happen to be in and actually enjoy a lot, here is a link to a very useful forum that discusses everything from training opportunties to locums to interview techniques.http://www.superego-cafe.com/forum/YaBB.pl

The bottom line: let's share information. We end up as better people, individually and collectively, that way.

@ben, God bless you my bro.Youve succeeded in waking me up, lol

Guys i have a question.
After finishing medical school in naija and becoming a doctor, how many years of training would one take to become a consultant plastic surgeon in the U.K or U.S. . .thanks

@Tudor,
If you get into a training post in the UK, for instance, my understanding is that the basic specialist training in Surgery (general) should take you about about 3 years, following which you would go for further 'higher' specialist training, which i believe is another 3 years. However, plastic Surgery is one of those specialties that have a 'name', so is very competetive. The chances of an Overseas Doctor getting into the training would be very very slim. I am not sure about the US. My friends there have spent 4 years in their training then another year or two doing what they call a 'Fellowship' whatever that means! I think the latter is supposed to make them highly competetive.

If you want to become a plastic surgeon, your best bet would be to target the US. Score very high in the USMLE and then try to match for Surgery. Of course it's also highly competetive there but i think the system is much more accessible for an Overseas Doctor than the UK. In the UK, you'll end up probably as a middle grade A&E Doctor.

All the best

@ ben,
Thanks a lot for reviving this thread.i actually look forward to reading from you everyday as opposed to the previous times i go to bankers forum or shell new generation forum becos of the palpable boredom in our forum.
I think a major problem we have is that of finances and then we cld consider the very tight schedule doctors have to go through to make ends meet here in naija.
Its not easy at all.however information cld help though.
thanks again Ben.lol.

what do we think about a career in the hmos[health maintenance organisations?]ie the health insurance industries?most times units in Nigeria are headed by Medical doctors.lots of travelling though.but is there really a future here?at the end of the day wld one regret not opting to go for residency?
it seems to be the in thing and ultimate.