The practice of medicine as a moral enterprise: Current brain-drain, the Nigerian experience, and bioethical intervention

Abstract

Insights into the human condition, suffering, and our humane responsibility to one another, especially in the practice of medicine, come into play in the emigration of many Nigerian physicians abroad. The objective here is to espouse a better appreciation of the practice of medicine as a humane and humanistic art, especially when practitioners are faced with ethical choices in the face of wanting better lives for themselves abroad. Also, to promote doctors’ and patients’ wellbeing, highlighting the social injustices and ills they continuously face. Doctors in Nigeria should have good working conditions and opportunity for a good life; however, abandoning patients for a better life abroad is ethically troubling, since medicine as we know, will cease to exist without moral commitment.

Keywords

• bioethics
• emigration
• medicine
• morality
• nigerian doctors
• physicians
• remuneration
• virtue