Solving healthcare crises: Professionals must work together, experts say

Crises bedeviling the health sector would be solved when medical doctors populating top management positions of hospitals carry along other professionals as part of their managements.

The past president of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN), Mr Olumide Akintayo and some other experts in the health sector gave this advised in Lagos.

Akintayo in a paper titled: “Challenges of Leadership and Inter-professional Crisis in the Health Sector” said that some medical practitioners’ past attitudes had not contributed to the sector’s growth.

They had been responsible for “the root of the collapse of the nation’s healthcare delivery system.

“This is because the input of only one group of professionals is used in managing the hospitals.

“Organisational leadership deals with the ability to plan for growth, productivity, profitability, financial efficiency and innovative business strategy,” he said.

Akintayo also said other challenges include: lopsided composition of the boards of management of teaching and specialist hospitals.

“Non implementation of the scheme of service of other healthcare professions, monopoly of the headship of federal and special teaching hospitals by medical doctors.

“Discriminatory salaries and wages as well as doctors embarking on illegal and unlawful strike actions.

“There is also the unprofessional and hostile disposition of doctors to the team approach and poor implementation of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).”

He said that modern healthcare delivery was a multi-professional and multi-disciplinary service involving many professions and workers putting heads together to proffer solutions to any problems.

He said that anyone aspiring to leadership positions should have the right leadership skills, training and integrity.

“Organizational leadership is entirely different from clinical or medical jobs,’’ he said.

He called for attitudinal change between medical doctors and those from other professionals in the sector to lift the sector out of its abyss.

Akintayo urged stakeholders in the sector to establish synergy that would bring new ideas and structures to grow the sector.

He added that health workers should to see themselves as having service contracts with their patients whose welfare should, therefore, come first.

“When this is imbibed, the tendency to dictate and expect others to comply will be minimized with attendant optimization of health outcomes.’’

Also, Mr Toyosi Raheem, the president of the Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria (AMLSN) said that government should budget more funds to revamp the sector.

Such funds would be used for providing infrastructure and equipment for secondary and tertiary health institutions.

Also, Dr Mabel Adjekhugele, Executive Secretary of Health Facility Monitoring and Accreditation Agency (HEFAMAA) called for collaboration of stakeholders in the sector to fight against quack laboratory in the country.

Adjekhugele said that medical-related crimes could only be determined by medical practitioners and regulatory bodies before the alleged suspect could be handed over to the police.

She said health related issues should be handled holistically because when we talked of health,  that included health providers and consumers.