Why We Are Re-employing Retired Specialists – FMC Reveals | READ DETAILS

The Chief Medical Director of Federal Medical Centre (FMC), Ebute Metta, in Lagos State, Dr Adedamola Dada, has revealed that retired specialists and other health workers are being reemployed owing to the exodus emigration of practitioners (japa syndrome) which has resulted to shortage of manpower to attend to patients.

Dada revealed that in various departments of the FMC, like the anesthesia, gynecology, surgical, and pediatrics, half of its specialists are retired but are still working to fill the vacuum.

“……….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.

“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” Dada stated in an interview with Punch Newspapers.

Asked the number of retired nurses or doctors the medical centre have recalled so far, the CMD, who is an orthopedic surgeon, said;

“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 anesthesia 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 own 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 gynecology department, if you go to the surgical department, if you go to the pediatrics 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.”