#JOHESUStrike2018 The Rant: No Body Wants to Take Over Doctors’ Job By Pharm. Sani Emmanuel
From the scratch, it’s a race. It’s all man for himself. Yes, we all know that, millions of sperm cells fighting to be the one to kiss the egg.
It’s the same replica with this noble profession I find myself, not by any fault of the universe but of my own choosing. At an early stage I was a fan of the arts but peer pressure, the need for relevance in my own microscopic mind made me run for the sciences, then came the need to narrow it down. I thought about my strengths, weakness, passion, bla di bla. The solution was inevitable apparently, I always loved a mystery and the chance or smell of freedom, enter Pharmacy.
Once it made an appearance, I came alive, my love for chemistry increased, my fear of drugs diminished and the thought of an adventure ahead gave me the drive and surge. I was indeed to begin a journey, so much so I chose the same institution as both options of first and second, followed by Pharmacy as indeed first and second choices, there was no turning back, I was certain.
I got in by the hair I must add, but in nonetheless. From the first day I was excited, of course the excitement dwindled when in my second year, I had to repeat a class.
School of Pharmacy in O.A.U to be specific as I like to not infer but speak based on first hand experiences as much as I can afford to; was a tug of war, each day was a battle of some sorts, and the forces seemed to come from everywhere. You could be forgiven if you assumed Pharmacy equals drugs and as such you should get to class and the first topic should be ‘Paracetamol and how to dispense it’. That was so not the case as I soon realised, Paracetamol you see is a product of chemical synthesis, now you see where I’m going with this (enter Pharmaceutical Chemistry). Pharmaceutical Chemistry is no ordinary chemistry as you would first have to go through basic chemistry, advanced chemistry before you get into the Chemistry of drugs (inorganic and organic starring carbon atoms spiced with all its cousins both direct and distant).
Now for the lovers of nature, you get to know nature begets all things. Oh I wish that was just it, but apparently you need plants to get drugs, because we don’t get to synthesize all of them.
However, you would be wrong if you thought the samples would be few and as such wouldn’t have to spend four years studying plants and how to get them to be the source of drugs. No, we were made to realise we need to understand plants, how to get the active and relevant parts out so you don’t give the bad with good, and trust me it is one helluva tedious journey.
Forgive my drama, it stems from my teenage years of reading foreign literature mostly detective, romance and horror novels, It’s intentions are however genuine. Dispensing as most people know is probably what a Pharmacist does and as much as it irritates me when I hear or even say it, it is true if you are short sighted, this is however a tale for another day. Dispensing is thought under Pharmaceutics which is one huge part of the profession that always seem to consume three times the volume of paper others required for good cause though.
Doctors can learn to realise the obvious truth, you are indeed the heartbeat of the hospital, but a heart can surely not function without its other organs
This is the face of the profession, apparently as it is the image that is presented to all, after all you do not need to know the chef at your favourite restaurant to enjoy the food, you just need it brought to you steaming by the dispenser. What most do not know however is micro-organisms are ubiquitous (in the voice of a lecturer of mine Prof. Lamikanra) and as such must be studied so they don’t get into our drugs.
The naive voice in your head probably thinks, ‘well just how to sterilise equipment, keep them out, that shouldn’t be much work’. Wrong, you can’t jump bridges apparently, you have to go through the basics, here’s why: some drugs are given directly into the veins and as such must also be sterile. Now that’s a twist even I din’t expect. Pharmaceutics is where you are thought how to actually manufacture drugs, after all the synthesized or extracted active drug component needs to be made available in forms that would be useful and best suit its intended use.
Oh, now you think I forgot Pharmacology. How could I, it is the key to relating drugs to the intended beneficiary. So now u would think, just a little of the human body and the comprising systems, Nope. It’s the anatomy and physiology of the human body down to the freaking cells. Luckily for me, we didn’t have to go to the extent of slicing through cadavers, all we had to do was simple really you would think, get small mice and inject with drugs, observe and draw inferences (enter Clinical Pharmacy).
Clinical Pharmacy was their way of exposing us to patients after all, what’s the point in all this tutoring if the people that the drugs are made for, don’t get them.
Today is the 1st of May 2018 and I have been up for about 30mins typing up this piece that feels like a memoir (even though I could argue with what I could possibly know to make me think I could write a memoir). You see there has been an ongoing strike action by a section of the staff of the hospitals nationwide JOHESU (Joint union of health workers). Apparently the union was a born as a result of the hospital staffs wanting to fight for their right as one body in opposition to the arch enemy-the medical doctors. I have never really understood why there should be any rivalry across professions, however the truth is there is. You would think we all should be running in different lanes and as such should fight to win our individual battles, however it occurs to me that the battle is purely for supremacy, and of course fight against tyranny. I have always pondered why that is the case because I have always had a huge respect for the medical profession as I believe it is noble and admirable to want to be a hero and save lives especially those who are almost losing it.
What I however have realised is, it’s been all politicised, after all it’s a battle for power, for supremacy, for sustained relevance and only one person can be declared champion. The Medical profession is one that has been recognized for its unparalleled importance since the age of Socrates, after all we all wanted to be doctors growing up. What we fail to put into consideration however is the power of evolution that gave rise to the discovery of penicillins, then other drugs which invariably became the sustained source of the powers of recovery or life-saving effects that doctors have today. In the early days there wasn’t such thing as a Pharmacist, what we had was a chemist, it is in the cause of evolution that the chemist needed to become a professional of some sorts that he became a Pharmacist.
When you think drugs, you invariably think Pharmacy, when you realise how thin the margin between how a drug can save a life and how it can take a life, it should dawn on you that only someone who is a professional and has dedicated his life to studying and caring for drugs should be allowed to dispense such to those who need it (enter the Pharmacist).
The profession is relatively young even though drugs have been in existence long before (afterall our forefathers had healing herbs of different sorts for different ailments and some herbs that were believed could cure all ailments at once), but the inability to separate or determine how effective or dangerous these unrefined substances were gave rise to the need to specialise on these substances and culture them to have them serve the exact purposes we desired.
When you think about the phases a patient is attended to, the one person that tends to stand out is the person that you see doing all the work, however just like the saying “behind every successful man is a great woman”, you should realise, someone assists the doctor whilsts he’s attending to the patient, the person helps bring tools he needs, helps monitor signs that needs to be monitored, provides primary care and even comfort for this patient in distress, this person isn’t invisible and isn’t necessarily a second rate citizen, he just wants to be that care giver that he knows might even be what the patients ultimately needs to get better,after all the mind has the unlimited power I have been told. And as such must be treated with as much respect as you would the doctor.
We were thought in school that one of the true goal of science is to have proof of an assumption, hence investigations, and innovations have given us different ways to have tests done to determine and correlate values to what is been inferred. After all, the best diagnosis is one backed up with investigations to ascertain its close to perfect validity. There is someone who spent years studying for this, who dedicates his life to ensuring that these investigations gives results that would best explain the actual state of the patient. This person is equally as important.
You have people who are in dire need of rehabilitation to return to the best physical form their body can allow, who after going through some trauma and scaling through (of course by the intervention of the team above) are finding it hard to live normal lives and are even contemplating the need for still living in such dire states. They get the intervention of a set of skilled professionals who possess the right combination of intellect and finesse to guide them through this recovery and at the end gain back themselves and real health in their fitness. They are as vital as the team before them.
After consultations with a doctor, and proper diagnosis, there’s a treatment plan that without any iota of doubt required medication. It’s a like a game on a chess board, once you make a wrong move, you are toast. You have a set of people who have spent good part of their lives studying drugs and who realise they have to give the right drugs as they seem fit whilst giving appropriate counsel to the patients, afterall, they are the last point of call before heading home to see what fate awaits them. I don’t have to mention how crucial they are.
We learn from an early age the importance of the human body parts working together as a team and how important it is for each part to give full regard and respect for the work its counterpart does. The same should be employed in the hospital, everybody has an important role to play and is a master of his own field and there shouldn’t be an overlap or an insistent of a part insisting dominion over another, it would only bring a label of ’tyrant, enemy, saboteur’, and this really isn’t needed in a place where everyone swore an oath to save lives.
The need for the unity amongst health workers in a joined fight against the doctors, shouldn’t be required if only doctors can learn to realise the obvious truth, you are more than relevant here, you are indeed the heartbeat of the hospital, but a heart can surely not function without the other organs. The insecure feeling should be thrown aside, and bonds should be formed to ensure the sustained growth in health provision. We are all human with varying needs, instead of antagonising struggles of fellow practitioner, mediate peace and help in settling grudges.
No-one wants to take your job, they only want to do theirs and feel good doing it.
By Pharm. Sani Emmanuel.
