by Chiemezie Madu | Oct 26, 2022 | Health & medicine, Society & Culture
I clearly recall my first experience at resuscitation. It was at night, in my first week as a house officer, fresh from medical school. A young lady, ravaged by AIDS and Tuberculosis, and as thin as the shadow of a hair had just given up the ghost and I was called in...
by Chiemezie Madu | Aug 15, 2022 | Health & medicine
One of my most heart-rending moments in my career as a doctor is seeing sickle cell patients going through a painful crisis. Perhaps the only thing more traumatizing is when patients come to the end of their lives. I think it is plainly wicked and extremely selfish,...
by Chiemezie Madu | Jun 10, 2022 | Health & medicine
A few months ago, I attended a seminar titled medically assisted dying (MAD), a relatively recent but controversial concept in medicine. Simply put, MAD is when a doctor, on a patient’s request, actively ends the patient’s life, usually by administering a...
by Chiemezie Madu | Mar 18, 2022 | Health & medicine
Mental health is very undermined in Nigeria and sufferers are often ascribed as suffering from a spiritual affliction. The devil is almost always blamed as the cause of mental health problems. You would expect this notion to be propagated by lay (non-medical) people,...
by Chiemezie Madu | Mar 4, 2022 | Health & medicine
Ask any doctor, among their toughest experiences in clinical practice are those that involve Jehovah Witness (JW) patients. Tough, not because they have complex medical problems, but because they present very difficult ethical dilemmas. I share two of my experiences...
by Chiemezie Madu | Mar 1, 2022 | Health & medicine
The job of a Chief Medical Director (CMD) of a hospital (read big hospital) has to be the toughest in the world. Whenever I walk into a hospital, either as a patient or a doctor, I marvel at the sheer amount of responsibility vested on one person to administer such a...
