By Anu Smith
Nigerian healthcare professionals are now battling huge pressure, increasing workloads, rising burnout, and fatigue due to the mass exodus of healthcare workers in the country.
The Chief Medical Director, of University College Hospital (UCH) Prof. Abiodun Otegbayo, stated this in Ibadan at the 36th National Conference of Institute of Health Service Administrators of Nigeria (IHSAN),
According to him, healthcare institutions face compounding pressure to hire faster. Not only to meet urgent quotas but because the recruitment processes are complex and slow.
“Recruitment processes have become a lot more complex and there’s a need to quickly fill up the spaces left empty.
“Hiring managers/units are often a major bottleneck. That’s especially acute right now, as healthcare professionals on-the-ground battle huge pressure, increasing workloads, rising burnout, and fatigue,” he said.
Otegbayo noted that healthcare recruiters must urgently address this dynamic, to accelerate the overall recruitment process. ‘If the recruitment is a burden for hiring managers, it simply won’t get done.
“If attracting healthcare workers into the sector is one challenge, keeping them there is another. Healthcare turnover is notoriously high Over two years, the average healthcare practice has a 51 per cent turnover rate. Across all healthcare roles, 24 per cent of all hires left within a year.
“Nurse turnover runs as high as 37 per cent depending on location and specialisation. Even if healthcare doubles, triples, or quadruples, successful rates- there’s no point pouring water into a leaky bucket.
“More to the point, it’s a waste of time and money- when healthcare recruiters are already short on both.
‘Plugging the leak must be an urgent priority for healthcare through 2022 and beyond and any approach must be cross-functional, not just recruitment-led,” the CMD said.
On enhancement of the Nigerian healthcare system, he said improving the quality of healthcare services can’t be overstated when
organizations across every sector can least afford rising costs and plummeting results following the severe global disruption Unless healthcare companies stop haemorrhaging spending, it’s care quality that will suffer.
He urged healthcare recruiters, that they must urgently look for cost efficiencies throughout the recruitment cycle.
“The age-old ‘do more with less’ dilemma has ever been crystallized. One huge element of that will be reducing reliance on agencies.
‘If you were to ask any young person in Nigeria today what their plans are professionally or otherwise, they would outline the steps they are taking to “Japa” without missing a beat.
“The exodus of Nigerians is not limited to young professionals though it is happening across all cadres. Nigeria is bleeding out its workforce at an alarming rate and by default, we are providing skilled workers at a highly subsidized rate becomes that are willing to pay the right price in terms of salaries, welfare packages and social packages,” Otegbayo said.
