NIGERIAN TEACHING HOSPITALS LACK THE LEGAL CAPACITY TO EMPLOY RESIDENT DOCTORS INTO RESIDENCY; ONLY UNIVERSITIES CAN

The current practice is that Medical and Dental Practitioners who are desirous of undertaking specializations into the numerous fields of Medicine and Dentistry apply to the Management Boards of the University Teaching Hospitals for Residency Training slots. The Teaching Hospitals that have Residency vacancies would then appoint the Applicants into Residency Training Program in their hospitals. This article posits that this practice is patently illegal. Nigerian University Teaching Hospitals lack the legal capacity to suo motu appoint medical and dental practitioners into the Residency Training Program without the admission of such practitioners into a University with a Postgraduate Medical Training Program, from whence the medical practitioners who wished for a Residency Training could be appointed into Residency in a Teaching Hospital. A look at the laws will clarify the above legal realities.

Section of the University Teaching Hospitals (Reconstitution of Boards, etc.) Act, on Functions of the Board, stated:
7 (1)      It shall be the duty of the Board—

(a)      to equip, maintain and operate the hospital so as to provide facilities for diagnosis, curative, promotion and rehabilitative service in medical treatment;

(b)      to construct, equip, maintain and operate such training schools and similar institutions as the Board considers necessary for providing the hospital at all times with a proper staff of hospital technicians and nurses;

(c)       to construct, equip, maintain and operate such clinics, out-patient departments, laboratories, research or experimental stations and other like institutions as the Board considers necessary for the efficient functioning of the hospital.

(2)      The duty of operating the hospital imposed by the foregoing subsection shall include, without prejudice to the extent of that duty apart from this subsection, the duty of providing proper courses of instruction for the medical students of the associate University, and the Board may perform the last-mentioned duty by arranging with the approval of the Minister, for students of such associate University to attend courses at other institutions not controlled by the Board.

(3)      The Board shall ensure that the standards of teaching provided at all establishments controlled by itself and the standards of treatment and care provided for patients at those establishments do not fall below those usually provided by similar establishments of international repute.

(4)      Subject to this Act, the Board shall have power to do anything which, in its opinion, is calculated to facilitate the carrying out of its functions under this Act.

Section 16 of the University Teaching Hospitals (Reconstitution of Boards, etc.) Act, goes further to state:

(1) The Board shall be responsible for laying down general policies and guidelines relating to major expansion programmes of the hospital and the provision of facilities for the training of medical students of the associate university and it shall be the duty of the Board to execute such policies and to keep within such guidelines.

Section 19 of the University Teaching Hospitals (Reconstitution of Boards, etc.) Act, on Interpretations, goes further to state that unless the context otherwise requires—

“Associate University” means the University from which the hospital derived its name and whose medical students receive aspects of their training from the hospital;

“Medical student” means a student whose course of instruction is (a) designed (either alone or in conjunction with  other courses) to enable him to qualify as a medical practitioner; (b)      designed for the further training of medical practitioners;

“Students” means a person enrolled at an institution controlled by the Board for the purpose of pursuing a course of instruction at the institution.

The laws are very clear. A University Teaching Hospital can train two categories of persons namely the Medical Students and the Students. The medical students are those undergraduate and postgraduate medical students from an associate University, while the Students are pure enrollees of the Teaching Hospital. Thus, while the Medical Students are not the enrollees of the Teaching Hospitals as they must come from an Associate University, the Students are admitted by the Teaching Hospitals as their exclusive trainees. In this category are the Teaching Hospital nurses and Teaching Hospital technicians only. The import is that all the medical students accessing clinical training in a Nigerian Teaching Hospital must come from an Associate University for the hospital to be in a legal position to train them. This means that medical and dental practitioners seeking to undertake Residency Training in a Nigerian Teaching Hospital must first seek a postgraduate admission into a Nigerian University from whence they can now apply to proceed to a Teaching Hospital for Residency training. This arrangement is not only the correct legal position, but also a very profitable avenue for the postgraduate medical students to combine postgraduate medical and clinical training at a go.

The University Teaching Hospitals (Reconstitution of Boards, etc.) Act is the Act regulating the functions of the University Teaching Hospitals. It must be noted that no other Act of the National Assembly can assign a function to the Hospital Board. This is because the functions of the Hospital Board is exhaustive. To assign a function to the Hospital Board, the National Assembly must alter the Act. Therefore, neither the University Acts nor the Residency Act can foist on the Hospital Board a function outside the provisions of its Enabling Statute. No other professions, other than Medicine, Nursing and Hospital Technicians, can be trained in the Nigerian Teaching Hospitals. All medical trainees must come from an Associate University.

Awkadigwe Fredrick Ikenna
awkadigweikenna@gmail.com
08039555380