THE POSTGRADUATE DOCTOR AND TRAINING IN HOSPITAL ADMINISTRATION

Abstract

The fact that hospital administration is being featured in a symposium on post-graduate medical education by the Resident Doctors of the University College Hospital, Ibadan; is to me a matter of great rejoicing. How often have we been reminded by our senior colleagues that a doctor acted for the colonial Governor of Nigeria when he was away on leave? Yet nobody explains why he no longer features even in a protocol list today! Could it be that doctors in their perceived role of the biblical Good Samaritan, ignored the realities of life and got sidelined in the scheme of things? Other professional groups have been much more alive than doctors to the importance of management within their professional callings. Just over a decade ago, a young prospective engineering student dumped on my lap prospectuses of Universities in the United Kingdom which offered engineering studies. I was taken back by the content of management studies in the basic engineering degrees and was completely bowled over when I saw B-Sc. Engineering Degree in Management which was on offer by the famous Imperial College, London. While it was clear to the engineers that engineering knowledge, skill, expertise, development vision, research output, can only be maximally effective and beneficial if administered within the understanding of engineering, and implemented "in tandem** with developments in the other social economic and political sectors of the nation's life, a doctor is mainly interested in having the final say of what his patients require to get well or prevent disease. How to get them, was little concern to him. It was to be other people's business.