As doctors and nurses attended to patients coming in on Thursday ahead of the recent long weekend, the Medical Director of an upscale clinic on Victoria Island welcomed two of his young doctors into his office.
Their mission – to convey news they were heading to the United Kingdom to continue their practice. The two are among the new wave of Nigerian doctors abandoning their home for a greener pasture in the UK, US, Canada and other countries.
More than 1,500 Nigerian doctors entered for a qualifying examination commonly known as PLAB1 with about 1,000 emerging successful.
BusinessDay learnt that a pass in the examination will enable the 1000 successful doctors to practice in the UK. This data could however not be assertively established as the UK General Medical Council’s website only provides a daily updated register on the number of doctors joining the country’s medical workforce.
As at yesterday, 12 Nigerian trained doctors have been registered to practice in the UK within a week of BusinessDay’s health reports, bringing the number of Nigerian doctors practicing in the country to 5,351.
Many sources inform BusinessDay that on graduation, young doctors shun the local professional exams, opting for those that could give them leverage to practise abroad.
One source who pleaded anonymity, said “the March and April Primary exams of the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria, and West Africa College of Physicians, NPMCN & WACP respectively, recorded the lowest enrolment figures ever. Rather than pay for the Primary exams, the smarter young doctors invest their money in enrolment and preparation for PLAB.
“The implications of this development are as diverse as they are challenging. The more serious problem is that nobody, at any level, really cares,” said our source.
The PLAB test is for doctors who have qualified overseas and wish to practise medicine in the UK under limited registration. The test assesses your ability, as a doctor, to work safely as a senior house officer (SHO) in a UK NHS hospital. There are others such as the, United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) and Medical Council of Canada Evaluating Examination (MCCEE), which also record a high level of interest from young Nigerian doctors seeking better work environments.
Francis Faduyile, president, Nigerian Medical Association told BusinessDay that when many of the specialists conclude their training, they sit for one or two exams, then leave the country for foreign destinations where he says “they are doing very well”.
Ogbonnaya Igbokwe, CEO, Heartwells Group, had also remarked on the desperation of doctors to work in a better environment, saying “We are in a deep problem to say the least. Most doctors have never seen physically, most of the machines that they are required to use in the course of their practice and they have been in practice for a long time.”
BusinessDay’s earlier report had indicated that the unfriendly work environment has implied health workers in Nigeria continually find every possible way to exit the country, leaving behind a health system which many in the mildest of descriptions, say is simply not working; not for the patients and not for the medical practitioners.
