EVERYDAY, over the past few months, Nneka Chukwu, a principal nursing officer at the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Enugu, checks out the latest developments concerning the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. She gets alarmed at the rising numbers, particularly the huge death toll recorded among health workers in the European country. Though she is afraid of the COVID-19 crisis in the UK, which is by far more severe than the situation in Nigeria, Nneka cannot wait to relocate to the UK, where she believes she will get the job satisfaction in nursing that has so far eluded her in her country, Nigeria.

An investigation conducted ‎by The ICIR in the health sector revealed that despite higher risks associated with the coronavirus pandemic in the developed countries in Europe and North America, many Nigerian doctors and nurses are currently making moves to take their services outside Nigeria, with the UK, United States and Canada as the choice destinations. The investigation also revealed that although poor renumeration has been a longstanding complaint of Nigerian doctors and nurses, ‘job satisfaction’ was the major reason the medical practitioners are leaving the country.

Doctors and nurses who spoke to The ICIR in the course of the investigation said they lacked job satisfaction. They also expressed the belief that job satisfaction in the medical field would be found abroad – in countries such as the US, UK and Canada, among others.

Nneka, who spoke to The ICIR in Enugu in the course of the investigation, which focused on the South-East states, is hoping to relocate to the UK very soon. She told our correspondent that many other nurses are concluding arrangements to leave Nigeria.

“I prefer (to relocate to) the UK. I have started the process and I believe that very soon I will leave. Even though I am scared of coronavirus and some other things that are happening there, I am going to leave. At the moment I know of so many other nurses that are just waiting for their visa to come out for them to leave Nigeria,” the nurse told our correspondent.

Although ‎it is widely believed that the opportunity to earn higher wages abroad was the major reason Nigerian doctors and nurses are leaving the country, Nneka noted that monetary consideration was a secondary factor. She stressed that the major reason was lack of job satisfaction owing to unsatisfactory working conditions.

Low nurses to patients ratio ‎in Nigeria
Nneka specifically identified the low nurses to patients ratio in the country – a situation which forces one nurse to attend to scores of patients at a time – as the major factor responsible for lack of job satisfaction among Nigerian nurses. She told The ICIR that the low nurses to patient ratio, which imposes an unduly high workload on the available nurses, was one of the reasons nurses are practically fleeing the country for the US, UK, Canada, Germany and other countries where they will do more quality work with less effort.

As of March 2020, the nurse to patient ratio in Nigeria was 1: 1135, which translated to 88.1 nurses per 100,000 persons. ‎The figure was disclosed by Mr. Shakuri Kadiri, deputy director, and head of human resources for health in the federal ministry of health, Abuja.

READ MORE: https://www.icirnigeria.org/work-nigerian-doctors-nurses-relocate-abroad/

Not just the job pressure but also the situation pf the country as a whole...