A nation needs a healthy life because health is a wealth as well. Therefore, healthcare is significant to the society because people get ill, accidents and emergencies do arise and the hospitals are needed to diagnose, treat and manage different types of ailments and diseases. Many of people’s aspirations and desires cannot be met without longer, healthier and happy life. All over the world, the healthcare industry would continue to thrive and grow as long as human being exists and resulted in forming an enormous part of country’s economy.
Cognizant to the above facts Ethiopia is striving to make accessible quality health service for its society across the country through the Ministry of Health. Despite most Ethiopians believe that their soul is on the hand of the almighty, medical doctors at different hospitals, clinics and health sectors are the one who are responsible for their health. Following this, the government of Ethiopia is working in collaboration with other governmental and non-governmental organizations for a better health service through giving an extensive emphasis for the health sector. Thus, many medical doctors are being graduated from different universities and colleges.
Among them, St. Paul Millennium Hospital Medical College is on the way to graduate about 200 medical doctors after couple of weeks. Perhaps, it is important to give motivational and leadership trainings for those young medical doctors apart from acquiring professional education due to the fact that they are going to be leaders of the medical sector in various parts of the country, said Tewodros Tadesse, CEO and founder of Center for African Leadership Studies (CALS). “The more we produce well trained manpower and assign to the health centers across the country, the better service the society will acquire,” he added.
CALS is one of the leading leadership institutions in the country that has a track record of serving over 10,000 leaders throughout twelve African Countries including Ethiopia. And it has been working with more than 75 governmental and non-governmental institutions in Africa. Accordingly, the institution in collaboration with St. Paul Millennium Hospital Medical College have been organizing leadership workshops for graduating classes of each year and managed to raise over 750 leaders in the health sector for the past 7 years.
In the vein of previous workshop, CALS in collaboration with the college have prepared a graduation ceremony for 160 newly graduating medical students of the college after they attained a three consecutive days motivational and leadership training. According to Tewodros, the training helps the newly graduating medical doctors to raise their confidence after their deployment across the country especially for those who will be assigned to lead the medical sectors found at rural areas.
Fitsum Derara is one of the trainees and students of the year 2019 graduating class at St. Paul MHMC. As to him, the training was like a key of life and helpful to acquire essential skills for the entire life apart from serving the society. “I would like to thank CALS, Ministry of Health and all the stakes that have played their pivotal role in helping us to be competent and well- confident medical doctors. Now, I can speak my readiness to serve my society genuinely in the health sector because I have gained enough capacity from the college and CALS,” he said.
As to him, although the commitment of the MoH is appreciated to work with other organizations for a better health service, it will be better if the ministry takes the responsibility to prepare such trainings even starting from the high school level.
“The training has paramount importance to convert the lessons that we have learnt through the past 20 years in regular class in to action,” said Hikma Edris, another graduating student of the college. “During the training we have also discussed about racism and stereotype which are the principal challenges of the country. Hence, we have understood that we are responsible to fight with such issues throughout our working experience. Despite the medical theory avoid discrimination among the society in our profession, we have exercising its demerit practically with the training.”
“Apart from professional, leadership, and motivational training we have also developed some points on critical thinking mechanisms. In deed thinking critically is paramount important for every aspect of life, each decision in the health profession obligates the professional to think critically. Because every medical doctor is working on human beings that need special attention and care,” Hikma added.
Due to the fact that healthcare is a social service, we are delightful to prepare such kind of free training programs for the graduating medical doctors each year since the past seven years. Besides, government, NGOs, investors and all stakeholders should engage themselves in providing quality healthcare across the country. Especially it is better to invest on the new medical students who are found at different medical institutions across the country, Tewodros avowed.
The ethiopian Herald August 20, 2019
BY HIZKEL HAILU
