A Physiotherapist, Dr. Esther Ibeye, has said poor compensation and heavy workloads have forced many of her colleagues to leave the country for better opportunities abroad.
Ibeye made this known during an interview on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief on Tuesday.
“I think this is even more like it is feeding back to the Japa cycle. So when someone feels they are doing a lot of work, and they are not well compensated for it, they start thinking of actually leaving for other countries where they don’t have to deal with a lot of patients. And even if they have to deal with a lot of patients, they get well compensated for it”.
She also cited how physically demanding a physiotherapist’s work is.
“Physiotherapy work is very physically demanding, and you are not supposed to see a lot of patients in a day because you have to do a lot of walking, standing, demonstrating the exercise, and supporting the patient to walk. In a public hospital, we could have just one physiotherapist attending to 5 to 7 patients, and some people are more than that in a day without so much support.
“Sometimes we have physiotherapists running from one patient to the other, whereas they are supposed to pay attention to one patient at a time. Patients have various deficits, such as patients without good balance and coordination. So they need the physiotherapist to be on standby while trying to relearn to walk and stand”, she added.
Ibeye’s statement comes in the wake of the celebration of World Physiotherapy Day, noting how vital it is to the health care system.
Government Investment
Speaking further on the breakfast show, Ibeye called on the government to invest in physiotherapy care in the country.
“The government really has to invest in physiotherapy care in Nigeria. We have to support physiotherapy because it’s a really vital part of healthcare.
“Health care can’t do without physiotherapy; it’s a profession that gets people back to function”, Ibeye noted.
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