Rural urban migration: a key to quackery
Professional migration has become a conventional thing among nurses in Nigeria and is really alarming. Every nurse tends to look for a better environment and an area of good remuneration to work because of the economy of the country.
As good as this reason is, it is still important to note that when everyone migrates from the rural area to the urban area there will be influx in the urban cities creating a strong unemployment challenge thereby leaving the rural communities vulnerable to the hands of quack..
Many nurses migrate for several reasons which include a search for a better remuneration, suitable and a lasting job. Similarly to the major factors that affect this reason is the lack of qualitative payment for nurses. Because nurses are not paid well in rural areas, it creates a vaccum in their minds that needs to be filled with the quest of searching for more. Human needs are insatiable.
If this is true then nurses need an adequate payment scheme that can be sufficient or at least be able to meet to an extent the numerous needs they have complementary to the kind and amount of energy they put into the practice delivering care and treatment to persons in the community.
To limit or prevent the massive influx of nurses from the rural to the urban cities then the government must put in place appropriate measures to meet an appreciable salary demands because there is increased and high cost of living in the rural area. Social amenities are insufficient and this can become difficult in delivering or rendering nursing care especially when the environment has not been made conducive.
Read This: Poor Renumeration; Pay Nurses well
As good as the reason above could be, there is an elicit need to consider explicitly the vulnerability of the rural communities from whence this extant migration has happened. The communities will be left with no adequately trained professionals and because of this unprofessional or villagers who are into traditional herbal medicine will begin to take the place of health practitioners and this in its simplest is what is called quackery.
Personally, I will classified quackery into two and this includes:
Professional quackery
Unprofessional quackery
Professional quackery occurs when people or other health workers like doctors, pharmacists, laboratory scientists, community health extension workers (CHEW), dentists etc who seems to have been trained professional begins to do the work of nurses which they were not trained for. This kind of quackery is an attempt to kill a rival profession and to pose a bad image of the profession that they are trying practice illegally.
While unprofessional quackery has to do with when ignorant individuals who were never trained by the four walls of nursing school begin to do a trial and error method of treating, caring or performing any nursing role both in urban or rural communities especially. This type of quackery has an increase incidence of mortality.
Conclusion
Nurses should put into consideration the quackery and its vulnerability when considering the option of migrating from the rural to the urban communities. Secondly, this still balls down to the government how? The government must look into advancing or improving the payment scheme for health workers in the rural areas because that is where the major work lies considering the lack of social amenities. Check this: Say No To Quackery In Nursing: Quackery Must Stop!!
DANLADI AMINU R.N, BNSc
