Pay doctors, but also let them account for their performance

As an African tribesman, I regard doctors with the same reverence and fear as we have for millenniums regarded that other clan of scoundrels that has access to the mysteries of death, life, and the misfortune of ill-health: the witchdoctor.

I am, therefore, having to dig deep to find the courage to suggest that we deny the witchdoctor what he considers his just portion, given his awe-inspiring abilities and willingness to enforce his rights.

I have a slightly different perspective on the doctors’ issue.

The doctors, or rather their representatives Sultani Matendechere and Victor Ng’ani, signed an agreement with the government on June 27, 2013.

They were asking for reasonably sensible things: training, a fair transfer regime so that they are not uprooted every couple of months, a 40-hour work week, a good working environment in the form of a call room with a clean bed, computers with the Internet and so on.

According to the collective bargaining agreement, they were also to get — and this is where the ugali starts to stick to the sufuria — a doubling of their salaries.

In other words, the salary for the lowest-paid doctor would rise from between Sh127,000 and Sh149,000 to between Sh327,000 and Sh342,000.

The salary for the best-paid doctor would rise from between Sh328,000 and Sh538,000 to between Sh852,000 and Sh946,000.

This is serious bread we are talking about.

My perspective is that there needs to be a quality of service dimension to the proposed pay rise.

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In other words, it is totally untenable to argue that doctors will get an increase in pay irrespective of the quality of care that they are giving Kenyans.

In my rather limited experience, there are three types of doctors.

First, Kenya has doctors whose greed is astounding and is only matched by their clinical incompetence.

I do believe that there are doctors who over-charge patients but botch the simplest treatment routines with sublime impunity.

The soil of Kenya is jammed with the corpses of Kenyans put there by greedy but incompetent doctors.

The second category is made up of doctors whose greed is matched by their competence; they are very good at their work but their primary motivation is to make large amounts of money, not necessarily to heal the sick.

They make their patients feel, not like suffering human beings deserving of care and compassion, but like walking, signed cheques. They deliver but they cost a bomb.

Then there are the gifted healers who were born to be doctors.

They are compassionate, approachable, and would do anything for their patients.

They are passionate and committed and fantastic at their job and they do not give a hoot about money.

I have met a couple of doctors like this and they left me feeling like a million dollars.

EARN IT FIRST
You can pay any amount of money to the second and third category and you will not get a squeak out of me.

As a matter of fact, good doctors who save lives and restore quality and ability to us when we are infirm are priceless.

They are heroes fit to be worshipped.

It is the murderers in white coats and a stethoscope around their neck for whom I reserve the most acidic vitriol.

The disaster is that the good doctors feel obliged to protect the murderers; there is an unholy and immoral brotherhood among Kenyan doctors that forces them to instinctively protect even those who do not deserve to count themselves among their number.

And this is why I strongly believe that the doctors should not get a kobo unless they agree to reforms in the medical profession so that doctors can be held to account for their performance.

A compassionate and hard working doctor should not have his or her pay doubled, it should be quadrupled.

The jokers who could not diagnose the simplest of illnesses even with 10 stethoscopes, these should be allowed no place to hide.

They deserve no pay rise, only a space in the truck to Kamiti.

The good doctors should realise that their profession is being depreciated by the quacks.

Their patients are being sent to the morgue or maimed by these quacks.

And the patients are losing confidence in the professionalism of Kenyan medicine and fleeing in droves.

There is nothing to be gained by maintaining a foolish brotherhood with sloppy, incompetent, and dangerous folks.

The smart thing to do is to throw the quacks under the bus.

*****

I see that Wiper has thrown out our friend, Governor Alfred Mutua of Machakos, among a list of other leaders it accuses of supporting other parties.

The Orange Democratic Movement party has done something similar.

I am assuming that the leaderships of these parties are cracking the whip to instil discipline and run a tight ship.

Politicians, especially the senior ones, are a lawless bunch.

They incite their followers to violence, they defame other Kenyans, they overthrow institutions, they rob the country, they are bribed by foreigners, they are the pure exemplification of self-indulgence and indiscipline.

So those who are asking for discipline should try their own medicine. 

[email protected]. @mutuma_mathiu