olaoluwatomi

Today i rested, its no wonder the Lord made the Israelites observe the sabbath and keep it holy. Rest does wonders to a body, you can actually smile at people and greet them, you can deal with difficult patients and not become a difficult doctor too. You view the world through a brand new pair of eyes that have had the opportunity to close for more than just a few hours, You actually begin to think you can take on the world, till the cycle of work starts again and you lose all the energy you regained. I have actually spent today resting and i feel brand new. I recommend it for anyone feeling a bit low now, tired and stressed out from the toil of work, take some time off if you can and rest. There are no known side effects. Caution it does not have a NAFDAC number:)

Ever had a difficult patient, i bet all doctors have hads their fair share of them, right now im still stewing from my encounter (not directly) with one very difficult patient a few minutes ago. Of course he is male (sorry guys) but i tend to have men as more difficult to handle than the women folk. A few days ago it was another man! But the funny thing is that at the end of their stay in hospital we are usually good friends or at least we entertain some semblance of friendship. My perceived percentage of difficult patients in my small experience as a doc, well lets say 1 in 50 patients are difficult. I just remebered another difficult one just now hmmmm lets increase the ratio to about 1 in 20. What makes them stand out, well ill try and give a list. 1. The difficult patient has his preconceived notion of how his treatment must be and despite your pathological description of his disease process he clings stubbornly to his own idea of the probable cause. i.e About two weeks ago an eld

In the past 48 hours ive met two young nigerians who want to study medicine. The first is the daughter of one of my patients sisters who apparently is the only one of her generation interested in pursuing a further education. She is from a low income family and her mother at first wanted to discourage her in view of the financial burden her dreams of being a doctor may cause. She apparently wanted to read pharmacy but was told by ?who that the only way to make money as a pharmacist was to open your own pharmacy shop! and that being a doctor was more lucrative. I wonder whoever told her that? I tried to albeit unsuccesfully dissuade her from her pursuit especially since i could see that money was the motivation. I might as well have been talking to a cat to stop licking its fur. Before i chose the 'glorious' field of medicine, i thought it was the only course worth studying. I had from an early age, (my earliest recollections of my decision to read medicine was when i was asked

Hi people still have nothing much to write talk about wtiters block, i actually have several topics that run through my mind while im at work but somehow when i sit in front of the system i run out of ideas, i need help dont you think. Today was better than yesterday was on call the day before and got a maximum of an hour and a half worth of sleep of course you can imagine i was working in auto pilot during thr day i made that up by sleeping from about 5pm to 2am this morning, i slept through a heavy downpour and woke up wondering why the weather had cooled considerably in the morning. That was how the last two days went, bear with me i'll be out of the block soon, maybe the next post will be about the low and high points in medicine i have gone through. When i first started as a house man certifying patients dead was a bit difficult and later i could certify and go straight to eat. I had to steel myself against breaking down or dreaming about the deae i suppose, but right now

Trying to make it a habit to record in my blog daily seeing i have been out of sync for a long while before i got back on track recently. What im trying to say is that i really do not have much to write today. I hope i can give you something more appetising than my dry dialogue tomorrow or wait let me leave you something to think on or reply to whichever you wish. A friend of mine sent me this tevt this evening, here it goes: As a doctor you can sacrifice money for expertise or expertise for money. I wish there was a centre where both could be balanced! What do you think? I'd love to hear from you.

I walked into the emergency room with my consultant this afternoon, he had seen me earlier on and asked if i had a strong stomach (he is a visiting consultant), well it so happened that a young lady had arrived at our facility over night and he wanted me to see her, so he was preparing me for the sight i was to behold. What was wrong with her? She had paid a visit to a local abortionist about a week before and successfully terminated her pregnancy, but had also unfortunately been infected. I'll explain... Infections can range from simple ones which can be cleared by a simple course of antibiotic therapy to the complex which unfortunately she got. What infection? Necrotizing Fascitis! For the medically uninitiated its a gangrene- i hope ive managed to simplify things. Her left lower limb is horribly swollen, with blisters all over, she has crepitus that extends up to mid abdomen. She is extremely ill looking, pale, in short she looks like death. Her chance for survival is very slim

Anyone who was in the ivory towers in the last decade would be familiar with the title of my blog. It was a rallying cry by the Academic Staff Unionof Universities (ASUU) which decried their poor pay as watchmen and nurturers of the younger generation. Their take home pay was not able to pay the bills for a month talk less of making ends meet before the arrival of another pay check! I wonder if doctors in Nigeria should also adopt that slogan, especially with the recent furore over non-payment of call duty allowances and a slash in salaries of doctors in Government establishments. I'll use my class as an example of the typical Nigerian doctor until i run into examples where we would not be an ideal prototype of the problems mentioned. We came into the University full of dreams about our future, we wanted to read Medicine, we were the cynosure of all eyes especially of those other students who wanted to read Medicine but could not gain admission. Our odyssey had actually started muc

I always like reading articles like this they make interesting reading especially if the topic concerns you. I truly agree with all who have written below those making points for the Nigerian trained doctor who is surely frustrated by the effort to make ends meet in a society where he is not only not recognised but continually made to feel that the years he spent studying medicine are a terrible waste of time. To my fellow dokitas it will surely get better why else would i answer the question in the affirmative, I have a dream.......................................... to those with the gift of dreams and their interpretations please dream good dreams about the medical proffesion and may they come to pass. AMIN Who Wants to be a Doctor?...(2) The Verdict according toOlusegun Adeniyi, Tel& Email: (08055001980) olusegunadeniyi@ thisdayonline. com , 03.14.2007 The two main contenders for presidency do not believe in the medical system they helped in contriving! What then is the moral

Ever heard the phrase? ‘Physicians heal thyself’ my tale below would tell you when that cliché became a part of my life. I am a very junior doctor having graduated just two years and a few months ago, I’m presently just one month and two weeks post my National Youth Service Programme. The story I am about to tell goes back to the year I was an intern. I was the only house man in the department of medicine and since we were short staffed the medicine unit also covered the emergency room. I was also in charge of all the wards, the male ward which had a special unit where those with full blown AIDS and all the illnesses that go with it were cared for, the female ward with a similar sub unit but fewer patients and the Private ward where those who could afford it were. I felt those months were the most hectic of my short career as a house man. A doctor is usually quite good at studying folks and giving a differential diagnosis even when the object of their diagnostic skill is not a patient.

My title is taken from the British medical Journals BMJ where physicians can send in a write up on a patient they have managed whose personality, condition,peculiar characteristic still lingers even when they are no longer managing such persons. This is my own version of the BMJS own series. She came in when i happened to be on the emergency room call about two years ago, she had been knocked down by a vehicle while walking along the road in her hometown in Iseyin. She was brought all the way to Ogbomoso by relatives who felt she would receive better care at our facility but the journey had taken its toll, she had sustained an open right distal tibiofibular fracture and had bled considerably. I don't know how far apart Iseyin and Ogbomoso are but the poor lady had suffered untold stress and had lost a lot of blood.By the time she arrived she needed to be resuscitated with lots of intravenous fluids but the main thing she needed was blood. Unlike in developed countries where blood

Hello everyone trying to write everyday read a book by Max Lucado which dealt with finding out your purpose in life, he took us through a series of steps which basically consists of doing what you like doing best with the least effort and guess what? i found i like reading and writing. If i were to be paid for just settling down in a comfortable position to read and write i would do so without hesitation, the pay would of course cover all my living expenses and a bit more to include a holiday to any part of the world of my choice, talk about dreaming! Well i started out to write a typical day in my life and here am i rambling away about my life fantasies, just in case i stop short in the middle of this im on call so if this is not complete know that i have been summoned to answer the call of duty. My day starts with me opening my eyes in the morning looking at my mobile phone and wondering how come its morning already 6.30am haa i have just an hour to do a pre round before the main

I watched a film the other day forgive me i cant remember the title but film freaks should be able to guess what it is when i describe it. A young black american family struggling with funds faces a huge crises when their son suddenly collapses in the middle of a baseball game, he is taken to hospital where his parents are told he will need a heart transplant but they have no funds or health insurance to pay the bills and the hospital wants to kick them out when the father takes the law into his hands............. Yeah im sure you have guessed the title but i still can' t remember the title.....well i only wanted to write about the scene where he was taken to the hospitals emergency room, when i watched it i was speechless and i had to pause the film at this point. The person who i was watching it with was wondering what was going on with me, i summed it up in a few words ' if that kid was in Nigeria and taken to any general hospital or primary health care centre and even man

Hello everyone i wonder if i receive any visits to my blog but if you do i am sorry i have kept you all waiting for months to add something to my blog i hope that this will be the start of many more bloggins! I spent a year in Chanchaga in Niger state serving my nation, my experiences there will be the subject of another blog article. After the end of service i decided to return to BMC Ogbomoso to work as a medical Officer for a few weeks. From many of my friends they wondered how i could derive any joy or satisfaction from working in the bush as they like to call it. My reasons for coming back don't matter now. Coming back here was not a tough decision and i found out that the people have hardly changed, iya woli is still around pottering around the theatre trying very hard to show that her bones may be old but she is still very much in control of the situation; student nurses a year ago are now either attending the school of midwifery or are in charge of the wards they once worke