THE Chief Medical Director of Federal Medical Centre, Ebute Metta, Lagos, Dr Adedamola Dada has revealed that the hospital has taken measures to retain health workers adding that a lot of people with skills, who are still strong, and who are retired, including retired specialist consultants, retired nurses, and the rest of them have been encouraged to come out of retirement.
The CMD during an interview with journalists stated that the hospital was creating an enabling environment for those who will not Japa.
“For us, we are expanding our services. And you can go round to see that we are expanding our services. And that is because once there is a problem, we don’t believe that we should fold our hands and let the problem overwhelm us. Rather, what do we do? We try to think through the problem and find a solution. One of the solutions that we have found is that in this city of Lagos, we have a lot of people who have the required skills, who are still strong, and who are retired; retired specialist consultants, retired nurses, and all the rest of them. So what we have done is to actively encourage these retired people out of retirement.
“And then the second thing, as I said, is to create an enabling environment, a good environment, so that even those who are staying will prefer to stay with us. And that is what has been happening.
“People are resigning. Some people are resigning. But I can tell you categorically that the impact has not been too severe on us. And that is not because people are not resigning, but it is because we have been able to design programmes and alternatives to ensure that we are in a position to replace some of these people who are resigning. Yes, it is a problem in the system, but we must not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by problems”.
Speaking on the strategy that has been put in place to minimise the impact of health workers who are relocating, he noted that some of the retired doctors and nurses have been called back, especially the specialists among them.
“We’ve called back quite a number of them. If you are talking in terms of specialists alone, almost half of the specialists in my anaesthesia department, almost half of them are retired, and they are still strong, and they are still working. But you find out that in many other places, they probably have reduced the number of surgeries they are doing. But our number, the number of surgeries we are doing, has not reduced. In fact, it has gone up. That is because we have been able to attract these specialists and experts who are still strong, who have retired to come back into practice, provide an enabling environment for them, and understand their need and their capacity.
“This is happening in all departments. If you go to the gynaecology department, if you go to the surgical department, if you go to the paediatrics department, we have a lot of these retired specialists who are still very useful to the system, who are still very strong. They are offering these services and they have nowhere to go because they are not going to Japa.
“So, it also gives us a great deal of stability and capacity to plan ahead. So these are the challenges. We also recruit the new ones, but even if those ones go, we have a strong foundation formed by these people. These retired people are always there to offer the service and give us the leverage that we need to be able to attract newer hands to come and support them even if somebody resigns. There’s no doubt that people are leaving. But what we have done is to create a hard core of those who will not leave.
Dada noted that people leaving the country was inevitable and that some of their enumerations outside the country cannot be compared with what they will be paid here.
“One of the things I have done is that every doctor who has resigned from this institution, I designed a questionnaire to ask them why they are leaving. And you find out that it’s not all of them who are leaving because of lack of money or inadequate remuneration. But some are also leaving because they are worried about the future of their children. Some of them are worried about what becomes of them after retirement. Some of them are worried about factors in the environment. All that we need to do is to actually improve those factors. Improve the remuneration, create an enabling environment, give hope and a good sense of security and all the rest of them”.
