Health experts have kicked against the demand by the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria and the Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria that only academics holding degrees in Medicine should be allowed to teach medical students.
The health experts argued that such a demand by the MDCN and the MDCAN was not realistic as medical students are required to take a wide range of courses, which could only be taught by other health experts.
They stressed that the medical field should remain open to other borrowed courses, which would make the medical students thoroughbred professionals at the end of their studies.
The MDCN and the MDCAN had stated that only medical doctors with degrees in basic medical sciences should lecture medical students to curb the high failure rate in post-graduate medical education.
“Medical doctors with degrees in basic medical sciences should lecture basic medical sciences in medical schools. Lecturers in basic medical sciences, who are not medical doctors, should be phased out over time,” the two councils had said.
But the National President of Association of Clinical and Academic Physiotherapists of Nigeria, Prof. Rufus Adedoyin, objected to the demand.
“The doctors are clamouring that medical doctors should teach medical students, that is not good enough. It should be left open, we have programmes in sociology, psychology and basic sciences. Medical experts cannot take it well. So, I do not subscribe to this. Not only medical experts should take medical students,” he said.
Adedoyin, however, argued that the outdated curriculum of the medical schools must be the cause of the high rate of failure and not the lecturers.
“Well there is always improvement in curriculum, it should be up to date. There is need to update it because curriculum is dynamic. What I see is that we should follow American style. When you finish your degree, you can enroll in medical school. The person would have been mature enough to take responsibility,”
he added.
Also speaking along the same line, a medical expert in the School of Nursing, Kafanchan, Kaduna State, Mrs. Mercy Adamu, stated the wide nature of the field and the need to bring in other hands, had made it imperative for medical students to borrow courses not being taught by medical doctors.
“I will say that lecturers, who are doctors, alone can’t teach them. If they can specialise in other things because medicine is not all about one aspect. There are so many aspects like anatomy and more so that the doctors do not have knowledge about,” she said.
