How many years of School to become a Medical Doctor
The number of years it takes to study Medicine and Surgery in Nigeria is 6 years. You will spend 3 years learning Medical courses of normal body functions in Anatomy, Physiology and Biochemistry. You will then take another 3 years to study abnormal functions in pathology, medicine and surgery and how to treat these diseases (pathologies) before you will become a medical doctor in Nigeria.
After the required 6 years of Undergraduate study in Medicine and Surgery, you must have gained a good knowledge on how to treat minor diseases and you can resuscitate (stabilize a patient) before the senior doctors (registrars and consultants) further take up the case. This means after 6 years of studying medicine and surgery, you are still not qualified enough to handle diseases alone as you will still go through another 5 to 6 years of studying usually referred to as Residency Program. In the residency program, you will be paid monthly salary depending on your level. But in undergraduate study, you will not be paid unless you are on scholarship (which is rare these days).
So in order to become a medical doctor who is a professional (that is, if you want to be a Gynecologist or a Surgeon or any Professional Doctor you want to be (Consultants or Professors of Medicine and Surgery), then you must start your Residency program after you undergraduate study. This means that the residency program is what is referred to as Postgraduate Medicine and Surgery.
It is not compulsory for you to become a consultant before you start practicing medicine and surgery after your undergraduate study of Medicine and surgery. You will be given your license to practice medicine and surgery during your Induction and Oath taking ceremony usually done immediately you finish the undergraduate program. If you do not want to do your residency program, you can start practicing immediately if you have hospitals you can apply at or if you want to become a Medical Officer of health. The only thing is that, Residency enables you become a consultant (highest qualification of clinical medicine and surgery).
For you to become a Professor of Medicine and Surgery you have to lecture and do all the necessary research before you become one.
How many years is medicine and surgery in Nigeria
So to answer how many years it takes to study Medicine and Surgery, here is a list of the number of years it takes for all the programs of medicine and surgery.
- It takes 6 years to study Medicine and Surgery for Undergraduate program
- It takes another 5 to 6 years for post graduate in Medicine and Surgery (to become a consultant)
- It may take variable number of years to become a Professor of Medicine or Surgery
- In total, you may spend 12 years to reach the Peak of Medical Practice in Nigeria
Problems and Challenges that may add to your years and make you stay longer
Having known the standard number of years it takes to study Medicine and surgery in Nigeria, there are some conditions or unforeseen circumstances that may force you to take longer years to study medicine in Nigeria. These challenges may include:
- Incessant Industrial actions (Academic staff strikes, Non-Academic staff strikes, Nurses and Pharmacists strikes)
- Accreditation and Administrative problems
- When you fail exams and have to add another year
The important and common one is the incessant strikes in Nigerian Universities or Colleges of Medicine and Surgery. When Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) goes on strike, whether it is National or within your University, it will affect you. If Nurses, Medical Laboratory scientists, Pharmacists and other Health workers (JOHESU Joint Health Sector Union) go on strike, it will affect your clinical practice because patients will not be available for you in the clinic and you will be forced to halt your clinical practice pending when they resume and patients become available. If the Association of Resident Doctors (ARD) goes on Strike, it will still affect you again because you need the resident doctors to teach you as the consultants may be busy or they may not be able to teach everyone at the same time as they are few. Because of all these, you are unlikely to take 6 years to complete Medicine and Surgery and you may have additional number of years which may be 1 or 2 years.
Other factors that may contribute may include poor administrative staff who may not do all the necessary documentation needed for accreditation of your medical program and that might force the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria - MDCN (the government approved body that governs and directs medical practices in Nigeria to ensure maintenance of standard and compliance such as approving medical licenses to doctors to practice or to hospitals to be established) to withdraw the license of your medical school. This happens often in some universities.
The other problem might be when you have academic problems that you have to add another year.
All these factors affect the number of years you will spend and they occur often and there is a high probability that when you start medical school in Nigeria, you may be affected especially when you are going through government (Public) universities compared to Private universities.
Number of Years to study Medicine in other parts of the world
Medical schools across the world take almost the same number of years as in Nigeria, even though there may be variations with a difference of 1 or 2 years depending on the country.
How many years to study medicine in USA
Studying Medicine and Surgery in the United States of America require you to have studied some undergraduate courses for 4 years before you apply for medicine. Such courses are mostly medically related such as Nursing or Biochemistry or any medically related course. After you are done with such, you can now apply for Medicine if you meet the requirements. When given the admission, you will spend about 4 or 5 years depending on the college. This may therefore add up to about 8 or 9 years (4 years for non-medicine course and another 4 years or 5 for Medicine course). Their advantage over Nigerians is that there is nothing as strike or poor administration and even if it exists, it doesnt take long to rectify.
Similar cases apply to the number of years to study medicine and surgery in UK (United Kingdom) or Germany or Canada.
In General, studying Medicine and Surgery takes a longer time and requires more effort compared to other courses and this is the reason why Doctors (anyone who studies Medicine and Surgery is called a Medical Doctor) are paid higher than others. You will study for longer period of time, you will still continue to study even after you finish and you will hardly have time for other aspect of life and their training requires more resources (Establishing Teaching Hospitals) and because of this, they are paid more.
If you want to be a Medical Doctor, especially in Nigeria, be prepared to go through many years of intense training; some of your non-medical colleagues will finish, go for Youth Service (NYSC) and start Jobs and some may marry but you will still be studying in School. This is the reason why it is said that you should be passionate about it and not go into it for the Money or the Job security it offers as you may become discouraged with time. Nevertheless, it is possible and you can do it as others before you have done it. I wish you the best.
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