From Lateef Dada, Osogbo
A medical expert, Prof Ahmad Rufai, has decried lack of Physiotherapy specialists in Nigerian hospitals and called on the government to support a bill for the establishment of clinical postgraduate programmes to train the specialists.
Prof Rufai, the Registrar of the Medical Rehabilitation Board of Nigeria (MRBN), said there is no physiotherapy specialist in Nigerian hospitals because of lack of University or facility to produce them.
Noting that there is a limit to what generalists can do in the hospital, Rufai said the lack of specialists to attend to patients is a ‘very big problem’ in the hospitals.
He stated this at Redeemer’s University, Ede, Osun State, in his address during the induction of the first set of 28 Physiotherapy graduates of the university, yesterday.
“One of the challenges that the physiotherapist profession is facing in the country is the lack of institutions, colleges, and university facilities that offer clinical post-graduate programmes.
“People go for a degree programme and they graduate with the first degree when they want to go into academia, they build their masters and Ph.D., but for people that are going into the hospital to treat patients, they don’t have a programme that will help them with skills that require to treat patients at the level of specialisation. They continue treating patients with what they have acquired at first degree. This is a very big problem because the specialisations are important. There is a limit to what generalists can be able to do to the patients. We need specialisations,” Prof Rufai said.
He stated that efforts to have a bill for the establishment of a clinical postgraduate college had failed at the National Assembly, Rufai noted that the society had registered an institute, saying “Without the governor’s recognition and support, it will be very difficult to have a very robust programme that is going to help the professionals all over the country and this is what we are calling the government to do and let’s have a bill through the national assembly so that it will become an act.
“The college will have more recognition and more support and the programme that it will do will be strong and professional, it will have something more robust in knowledge and skills that they need at the specialisations level. If we have in Nigeria, patients are going to get the best services.
“Unless the government supports the programme, gives the recognition so that it can be able to be institutionalised in hospitals, then it is still going to have a lot of challenges of producing a robustness that we need in the specialisations,” Prof Rufai said.
The Acting Vice-Chancellor of the University, Prof Ahmed Yerima, advised the students to be the catalyst of change in the nation’s healthcare sector.
Represented by Prof Adebola Adebileje, the VC urged the inductees not to forget the power of empathy, the warmth of a smile, and the comfort of a reassuring hand on their patient’s shoulder.