BY TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
Medical professionals in Nigeria have called on governments at all levels to prevent further brain-drain in the nursing profession by ensuring that enabling environment is provided for nurses and other healthcare workers.
They made this charge while speaking at the first edition of an annual conference organised by the Association of Osun State Government Intern Nurses (AOSGIN) in Osogbo. According to them, nurses deserve to be treated better by government in terms of their remuneration and better working conditions.
Addressing the theme of the conference, “Interns in Health Sector: Major Stakeholders for Future Quality Care Services”, the keynote speaker, Prof. Bayo Ajibade, the Dean of Faculty of Nursing, Ladoke Akintola University, Ogbomosho, said if nothing urgent was done by government to provide conducive environment for nurses, Nigerian hospitals might soon suffer worse brain-drain, especially in the nursing profession.
Ajibade asked government and other stakeholders to provide better remuneration and other incentives for nurses, in addition to the provision of modern equipment, electricity, water and security in the country.
Represented by another don from the Department of Nursing, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Dr Olufemi Oyediran, Prof. Ajibade expressed worry that government had not been able to do the needful in the health sector, attributing its failure to rising exodus of nurses and other medical practitioners abroad.
He said, “Internship began in the early 1920s and it was the medical doctors that started it and in 2017, after a rigorous agitation and move by nursing leaders, associations, regulatory body, nursing administrators, the council approved that all graduates of nursing from the university should also have a year internship experience. Interns are students that want to acquire hands on experience in their clinical area, so, they are exposed to 12 months clinical training under the guidance of their mentors, supervisors, and preceptors so that they can have a real work-life experience of what they are going to meet when they become registered nurses.
“They (intern nurses) are stakeholders because wether we like it or not, we are leaving them in this profession and they are going to take over from us and after their internship, some will go into education, some will go into research, some will be in the clinical practice. Also to bring up young nurses to provide care and to encourage new knowledge to provide evidence-based care to our teeming clients, patients and the health sector, during their internship, they must have this open mind and be available to their patients and mentors.
“Though, most of them have the intention of leaving this country after their internship. Eight out of 10 nurses are going to the western world. For these ones (intern nurses), in the next few months, come and check them, they would have gone to either U.S, Canada, United Kingdom where they are better paid and provided with great working conditions.
“So, I want to implore the stakeholders, the government, the nursing leaders, politicians, security bodies to provide conducive environment for these young nurses, so that the huge investment that we would have put on them will not be used by the western world. It’s not fair that we will train them here and they will go abroad to demonstrate these skills. So, stakeholders must give them the enabling environment in terms of equipment to work with, their safety, welfare and remuneration.”
Also speaking in the same vein, the Acting Head, Department of Nursing, Osun State University, Osogbo, Kamoru Adesina, urged governments at all levels to increase the emoluments of intern nurses and registered nurses in order for them to give their best and desist from leaving the country in search of better opportunities.
In her remarks, a nurse, Oladapo Huriwat, one of the event’s organising committee members, said the conference was organised to ensure that intern nurses had a sense of belonging to their chosen profession, learn from their senior colleagues and discuss with policymakers in seeing the need to attend to issues propelling brain-drain and the growth of the Nigerian health sector.
