I reported to the Department of Electric Power Engineering for my postdoc on the 1st of October 2013. After the reception, I was taken to the office I will be using for the 2 years I will spend in Norway. It has a brand-new Dell laptop and a Dock to connect to a monitor supplied with it. Before I can step into the lab, I must do a safety course. One is an online test which I have to pass before the physical safety lecture with the head of technical staff. They got my foot size and ordered a brand-new safety boot. The rule is that I can't step into the lab or workshop without the boot. Safety first.
A few days later, I was taken to the lab. And Lars Lundgaard, my supervisor, said, Abdel, this is where you will spend your 2 years. We all laughed. So, I began to set up the lab. After a few weeks on it and I thought I was done, I called my Professor to have a look. He checked all the connections and he said the setup was ok. I was happy and looking forward to switching it on. My thought was that his "ok" was all I needed to start work but he said there was one more step to cross before I could turn the setup on.
He said a designated senior technical staff needs to check
that the experiment is well set up, all safety requirements satisfied, and safe
for me to use. It's high voltage and you can't make any mistakes. The technical
staff will then sign an approval form in which a copy is hung on the setup.
The senior technical staff in the department at NTNU was out
of the office and he contacted an authorised technical staff from SINTEF who
came for the assessment. He made some observations on the grounding of a part
and asked me to correct it. My Professor told him that he would ensure I get
that done and so he signed the form.
The process pushed me into deep thinking about our system in
Nigeria. While most of us, including their just employed academics, are Mr.
Know-it-All in our system and think we can run a lab without technical staff, a
technical staff needs to assess and approve a setup in a Norwegian University
lab before a researcher and research students can use it. Not a professor can
bypass that process. The assessment is in the interest of the user, the
facilities, and the research output. I experienced strong teamwork.
There is a trending memo on a directive from NMA that
reminds me of this internal rivalry among professionals within the Nigerian
systems that is dragging us back. The politics among the academics. The rivalry
between the academics and non-academics. The Abuja civil servants' hatred for
university lecturers, especially if they happen to be in charge of a button to
press against the academics.The rivalry between medical doctors and other
health workers.
We have the artificial barrier between engineering and
physical sciences in the universities. You can't lecture engineering students
if you don't have an engineering degree and COREN-registered Engineer. The
mounted artificial barrier between medical and life sciences. Medical students
were taught biochemistry by the biochemists in Life science for years. They
ain't qualified to teach medical students any longer. Medical students must be
taught by only lecturers with a medical degree. etc.
The NMA directive was that the medical and dental
practitioners engaged in teaching pharmacy students on clinical
rotation/clerkship should discontinue such engagement with immediate effect. I
saw the memo as another internal wrangling that I thought could have been
sorted without affecting the system. The memo generated an interesting
discussion on my Facebook wall. So I decided to read a bit about clinical
clerkship and clinical pharmacy.
The narrow knowledge I got was that Clinical Pharmacists
played an important role in ensuring that the medicines prescribed to patients
are suitable. Clinical rotation/Clerkship is a medical term used in medical
education to describe training to provide students with a practical and
stimulating learning experience.
The clinical students are allowed to participate in ward
rounds along with the healthcare team and provide a wide variety of clinical
services. Clinical rotation/Clerkship for pharmacy students is a similar
practical training to improve the quality of clinical pharmacy. It is designed
to provide the opportunity for the student to have direct patient contact,
apply knowledge in real-time, and other associated pharmacy experiences.
Universities around the world do this as a collaboration
between the College of Medicine and the School of Pharmacy. During ward visits,
pharmacists assessed drug charts to ensure that prescriptions were safe,
effective, economical, etc. The inclusion of clinical pharmacists in ward
rounds was reported to have had a tremendous impact on the healthcare delivery
system. It can reduce adverse drug events, improve communication, and enable
collaborative decision-making.
The few hours of reading have just improved my knowledge of
the role of clinical pharmacy in quality healthcare delivery. I saw one
similarity in the role that the technical staff was mandated to play to ensure
that I had safe lab work during my postdoctoral research work; the role of the
Clinical Pharmacist to ensure that the medicines prescribed to patients were
suitable. The role was for my safety, the safety of the equipment, and the
anticipated result. A THIRD EYE SUPPORTING partner that I can't FORGET or
IGNORE in my career.
When we have different professionals in a system, every
professional has a clear role to play in making that system work. So why the
rivalry among us instead of healthy competition to bring benefits to the
system? Why can't we sit down to discuss our differences and come to an
understanding? Why the mounted artificial barriers? What are we protecting?
What role are professional bodies and Associations playing in bridging this
gap? Or are they widening the gap?
I got a PhD from an Engineering Department where the 3
professors in the department who supervised me got their PhD in Engineering,
Physics, and Chemistry. I always consider myself lucky to have worked with
these great minds that injected different flavours (engineering, physics, and
chemistry) into my PhD work and experience. Why can't we copy this? We have
societies like IEEE, the largest engineering institution, that admit relevant
members without barriers. Why ain't we copying this? We have some Nigerian
professors in the US who are beneficiaries of the world of academics without
borders but encouraging the barriers in the Nigerian system.
We need to sit down to reflect on the gains of these
ridiculous rivalries within our systems. We need to ask ourselves with all
honesty if the so-called gains from the barriers are personal gains or a gain
for the system. Let's reflect on the power of teamwork and collaborative
decision-making. We need to put an end to these unnecessary rivalries and begin
to dismantle these artificial barriers for effective teamwork toward
repositioning our system, especially the university system.
Dear colleagues, despite the low pay, people think you are earning more than your
salary because they truly feel your value is that high. These people are
looking up to us, academics, as the torch bearer of the nation. You are their
brainbox. We must be seen playing that role instead of all these in-house
fighting.
We can do it. We can work together to make our system work.
We can make Nigeria great. We just need to keep our ego and selfish interests
aside and work for the system.
By
Prof. Abdelghaffar Amoka Abdelmalik, PhD.
Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
aaabdelmalik@abu.edu.ng.
Copyright © Amoka 2024
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