By Gäng Buoch Jr
I don’t intend to compare the horror of the actual slavery to how medical interns are being treated in South Sudan today, as clearly, no one owns the interns, but there are several factors of similarities considered here.
Medical interns are mentally drained and subjected to pain, suffering, intimidation, and emotional cruelty by the so-called seniors and administrators in the name of training.
Unpaid medical labour is a modern form of oppression in our nascent republic. It’s unethical, and its institutionalization in public hospitals as a new normal is deeply concerning and detrimental to the future of health care in our country.
The medical profession isn’t charity work; its acquisition requires a lifelong personal investment, commitment, devotion, and hard work. The families of these young people (interns) have paid a substantial amount of money in tuition fees to medical schools as medical courses are one of the most expensive, time-consuming, and energy-demanding courses to study in universities globally.
Medical interns play very crucial roles in public hospitals in our country. I don’t see the reason why the government of our nation is so reluctant to reward, acknowledge, and appreciate their enormous contributions in public health settings by paying them basic wages to sustain themselves.
For example, if you go to Juba Teaching Hospital, Al-Shaba Children Hospital, Juba Military Referral Hospital, or any other
Teaching public hospitals today in our country, the medical staff you will find in the emergency room, outpatient department, and admission wards are mostly certainly medical interns, such as house officers, clinical officers, and nurses. They provide endless life-saving services to critical patients 27/7 without being taken care of by the institutions they work for while being constantly threatened with prolonged or delayed internship periods, intimated, and mentally tortured.
The interns provide a lengthy bridge between the consultants and general practitioners, who usually spend most of their time in their private clinics or hospitals making money, unlike in public hospitals, where they get paid under $30, rarely a month.
The interns formally receive patients, diagnose them, and provide primary medical care and treatment until the consultant/general practitioner comes and supplements the initial plan of the interns.
Some people may not understand what an intern goes through in the name of training, obtaining skills, and knowledge consolidation.
Some departments in our public hospitals do not provide an intern even with necessities like drinking water, food, and transport despite being stationed to work for 24 hours or more on duty.
What hurts a lot is the fact that the service provided by interns isn’t entirely free to the vulnerable, poor citizens who usually come to public hospitals. There’s a small amount of money paid by the patients as a consultation fee; this money is collected by the hospitals, and not very little is given to the interns whose services generate such money.
You can imagine the pain that one experiences by working their butts off as an intern, and somebody else benefits from your sweat. It’s like the people who run these institutions lack human empathy and understanding of human physiology, despite having some of them specialize in the subject. There’s nowhere on earth where a fellow human can work for more than 24 hours without being provided with food and water.
Unpaid Medical Internships are obstacles to professional development as they provide a challenging and unconducive working and learning environment, which makes it so hard for interns to acquire the needed life-saving skills. The government of our country should pay attention to the training of health workers by formulating policies that are compatible with learning and continuous medical education for health workers because a healthy nation is a wealthy nation, and that can only be achieved by having a highly trained and skilled workforce in the health sector.
Internships are widely considered positive experiences across medical disciplines, they increase the chances of interns to acquire skills and navigate a career path that suits their aspirations and dreams.
They arguably expand interns’ professional network, allowing them to experience firsthand what their job looks like, applying their knowledge in the real world and pick-up skills and necessary information outside the classroom and making them more equipped to save lives.
This is very important for every country across the world to develop and train medical professionals for effective health services.
Let’s take an example of our neighbouring countries. Their government pays medical interns highly and takes good care of them because they are the future of health care in their countries, and the government understand their critical roles and the nature of the service they provide to the citizens seeking health care in public hospitals.
Why can’t our government through the National Ministry of Health take a precedent from our neighbours and get out of this jungle of ways of running the vital institutions in our state?
I recommend the National Ministry of Health and relevant institutions of government to consider the following.
- Pay interns according to the regional standards for the services they provide to the public. The same way medical interns are paid in Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Sudan is the way they should be paid in South Sudan.
- The government should draw a policy that mandates specialist private hospitals to take a certain proportion or number of medical interns for paid internships in their facilities to provide adequate training, and to avoid financial burden and congestion in public hospitals.
- Abolish unpaid medical internships if the government can not pay the interns and make it a sole responsibility of potential employers of fresh medical graduates to provide necessary training or paid internships to their employees.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely mine.
Interim Chairperson of South Sudan Intern Doctors’ Association (SSIDA), Juba.