Resident Doctors’ Strike: We Are Overstressed – Bauchi Specialist’s Hospital CMD

The Chief Medical Director (CMD), Bauchi State Specialist’s Hospital, Bauchi, has lamented that the hospital is being overstretched by the number of patients pouring in on a daily basis.

Resident doctors, under the aegis of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), on Monday, resumed an indefinite strike they had suspended last April over their welfare and other sundry issues.

The CMD, Dr Ya’u Hameed Suleiman, lamented that the Bauchi State government-owned specialist’s hospital is being overstretched due to the low number of doctors working there, Daily Post reports.

Suleiman, a consultant general surgeon, said though the doctors in the specialists’ hospital did not join the nationwide strike, they were being overworked since their counterparts at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital (ATBUTH) in the Bauchi State capital had joined the ongoing NARD strike.

According to the CMD, “Thank God that the doctors in the hospital have graciously not joined the ongoing strike by resident doctors.

“Our main problem is that we are overstressed by the system already. The specialist hospital is deficient in the number of doctors; as big as the hospital is, the number of doctors is very low.

“Already we are very stressed with work due to the strike at the teaching hospital (ATBUTH). It is almost making it impossible, but we have to do what we can.”

Dr Suleiman informed that the state government had given the hospital management the green light to recruit more doctors to bridge the gap, saying that, “as a result of that the Bauchi State government has given the go-ahead since Monday to recruit medical doctors to come in.”

While calling on patients to accept what he termed “the little services” being rendered to them by doctors in the hospital, the CMD emphasised that the few doctors are being overworked.

Suleiman, however, called on the Federal Government to as quickly as possible sit down with striking doctors and come to an agreement so that they would return to work.

Daily Post observed an increase in the number of patients, both outpatients and those on admission, in the specialist’s hospital, during a visit to the hospital.