After 6 years of studying Optometry in Nigeria, one sets out into the job market tagging a Doctor of Optometry (OD) along. Then comes the unending quest to find a good place to do the compulsory 1 year internship, just like our Medicine and Surgery counterpart! By chance, you may be fortunate to do it in a federal establishment but in most cases the scenario depicts a sorry state of of our internship program (I will discuss that in a subsequent blog). The young Optometrist intern is left in the cold, either used as a marketer by senior Optometrists or used as a money bag by other more sinister senior colleagues of ours. Imagine a situation were a young Optometrist intern, devoid of the necessary clinical experience been thrown into the hordes of darkness, in the market square to scout for customers and make glass sales without recourse to our ethics!
Then he/she finishes the internship and zooms off for the compulsory 1 year NYSC (National Youth Service Corp) to serve their father's land! Just like our Medicine and Surgery colleagues, we all go to serve our father's land. We suffer, we sweat, we put our lives on the line to serve the nation patriotically. Yours sincerely even have to face the threat of Boko Haram while providing eye care services in rural Bama, Jere, Munguno etc all in the name of vision 2020! What came out that? We had to escape via the whiskers when Boko Haram's threat became viscous. Then NYSC finishes.
The job market keeps toying with us, we have to live on the benevolence of the health ministry to get us job in federal establishment. As if that is not enough, some colleagues go practically begging for food or live by the harsh reality of underemployment!
Then our Medicine and surgery colleagues, enjoying a better pay and the plum jobs out there and truly living out the Doctor title. They prepare to go into various specialties in our various institutions to do their residencies... But the Optometrist colleague? We are left to wait for 10 years post NYSC before we can embark on post graduate studies in university of Benin! Is it a residency program? I doubt it. But all the same we do not have a residency scheme for NYSC Optometrists neither do we have an internship scheme befitting this beautiful profession in Nigeria.
Oh what a lost cause! No wonder the medical doctor, a colleague of mine in a hospital were we co-practice, preparing to go into residency in internal medicine asked me if we do not take post-Med school exams. I was thrown aback but that is life for you! Oh Optometry were goeth thou?
Hope you got the message. Pass it on...
Dr Ezebuiroh Victor Okwudiri
N/B: This article has no financial interest!
