Once top of their class and full of
promise, young doctors now face a
brutal truth—medicine is not the
prestige-filled path they dreamt of,
but one paved with burnout, despair and broken systems.
In lecture halls, they were the
brightest—the ones who aced exams, sacrificed sleep and believed
that hard work would yield not just
meaning, but stability and success.
But reality, for many young doctors in Kenya, is far more harrowing.
The path to healing others is increasingly breaking them.
Dennis Miskella, deputy secretary
general of Kenya Medical Practitioners Pharmacists and Dentists’ Union says the
reality breaks them once they start
practicing, driving them, especially the young ones into mental health
beds and early graves.
He told the
Star in an interview on Thursday
that the scourge of mental health
concerns, including depression,
drug abuse and suicidal tendencies
is a result of a chain of pressures
that makes the practice no longer
enjoyable and prestigious.
Miskella said besides medicine
being a tough subject, a broken
public health system, limited human resource and losing patients,
worsens the mental health condition of the young doctors.
“Young doctors find it rough
to take off and it is a matter that
makes us scratch our heads everyday as a union,” he said.
Miskella said there is need to
review training institutions since
most of them are admitting more
students than they can train.
The economy is also not stable
enough to absorb them.
“We have universities that are
purporting to admit more students
than they are able to properly train and equip. Some train up to a maximum 650 students against the required 250. Some are allowed to
admit only 50 medical students but
they take in as many as 300 students,” he said.
“This has an impact on the government’s capacity to cater for doctors, including interns. We have
addressed the matter with CS Aden
Dale and we continue to push.”
Miskella said there is need to
expand internship centres for graduate doctors and evenly distribute
the senior doctors and consultants
who mentor and supervise.
In most cases, intern doctors get
posted to understaffed facilities,
which are poorly equipped.
Managements also overwork
them, leaving a negative impact on
their mental and physical health.
“In most facilities, it is the intern
doctors who do most of the work.
We have cases where their supervisors, who are equally frustrated,
shout and mishandle them. The
young doctors then easily resort
to the bottle or other destructive
means of coping,” he said.
KMPDU believes creating a
Health Service Commission is the
solution to managing the health human resource.
He says corruption, bribery, political patronage in the counties is
causing major challenges.
