The Stethoscope Does Not Make A Doctor; Attitude Does By Ikechukwu Ogbu
Someone said, “Mental Status Assessment (MSA) should be deployed as a prerequisite criterion before and during clinical practice as a medical doctor in Nigeria.”
The implication of the above admonition is the obvious: there are some good looking, but sick men who are trying to care for the sick. Biblically, it’s sheer stupidity to try removing a fragment of dust from a brother’s eye while one is staggering around with a plank of wood in his eyes. In the philosophy of Nursing, one must be fit before making another fit. Logically, it’s foolishness beaming a red signal for one to act in this conflicting service of virtue.
However, this is not for Doctor Nuwar A M. of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, Borno State, Nigeria whose career is an indication of a well clothed man taking bath upon his clothe. For some special advisers and destructive critics who will quickly hit me up in the inbox, please, be informed that any negative act, be it assault or battery meted out on a nurse in public will be treated publicly too. Whether that very nurse is in any amorous relationship with a doctor is never our concern. We become very concerned when ethics and discipline could not be utilised in the treatment of those silly behaviours between lovebirds in private and it begins to dampen or relegate my seraphic profession, Nursing to the background. The fact is that an inimical hand on a nurse, is a dirty slap on our Mother, Florence Nightingale, including NMCN who are very soft in handling some bizarre and blatant nonsensical behaviour.
I’ve seen where some clients laugh mockingly at a young nurse and even student nurses for being scolded by a doctor, publicly. I believe these breeds of nurses are those species who were trained to obey their superiors, even beyond the stethoscopes. They were taught with strictness that obedience was the basic tenet and fundamental desideratum for team work. This teaching got imbued in them that they’re being used as experimental rats to demonstrate agility over fragility. Tufiakwa! This is by the way, anyway!
One of the outstanding qualities of a professional, especially someone working in the corridor of people’s life is neither in the glamorous title that follows his name nor the skills and clinical knowledge accrued from the classroom. It’s rather the wisdom of human relationship and the gentle act of mastering oneself in the titbit of emotional intelligence. Knowledge can take us to a great ladder in life, but only our attitude can sustain us there.
I’m perhaps sounding soft because I want to respect a profession whose (some) members have failed to respect themselves. And this, I must say, is obtainable commonly in Nigeria. As an agent of optimism and positive change, I’ve always called upon our consciousness the urgent need of opening wide doors for men into this noble profession. No doubt, the preys of these predators have always being female nurses. #WeNeedMoreMeninNursing. I commend our ladies who are turning into men in the regard of some serious approach on the ward.
Hardly had Doctor Ajibola pleaded guilty as well as mercy in the jurisdiction and the case adjourned than this handsome idiot began craving for a space in a black book. Currently, he has been suspended by the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, Borno State where he was wrongly employed. However, this is never enough and can never be enough until the cows come home.
