My goodness I am vexed and frustrated. I am doing my best and yet I am met by hard stops and shifting goal posts. I am not at liberty to disclose the details of all my current life challenges but what makes it so so SO strenuous is that it’s beyond my control! I don’t have the ability to alter the seemingly downward spiraling of occurrences, I can only watch myself get sucked into the next effect of the mess and as an organization-lover, that’s the worst part.
Actually I can talk on one of my issues – it’s the paucity of data on the Nigerian health system assessments over the years. I am really hopeful about helping out with solving the issues that is the dysfunctional Nigerian health system, and at Imperial this term I’m doing a module on Health System Development – so I’m eager to apply the new technical knowledge I’ve gained to the Nigerian context – then I’m met with the bottle neck that is Data unavailability – particularly peer-reviewed, published data.
I was so upset because how can you solve a problem that isn’t accurately defined? What would form the baseline for your improvement model if the indicators aren’t described alongside with the parameters used so that the subsequent data is collated in the same way to provide accurate results?
So I took to Twitter to lament because sometimes my chiefs bring solutions and this time was no different – turns out there’s something called “Grey literature” which is basically data that hasn’t been peer-reviewed and thus isn’t the most respected in terms of accuracy – BUT – it’s admissible in the context where the preferred type of data isn’t available – which is the case in a lot of data around Nigerian health system assessment. I checked with my school after my Chief asked about it and lo and behold it’s accepted! But as I’d be at risk of scoring lower because my paper won’t be referencing rich data sources compared to my course mates, I just might be able to do it as a side project, because I truly want better for the Nigerian health system, I do.
Anyways, I’m having to breathe in and out loud to calm myself down regarding my other problems that can’t be solved by Twitter – and pray to God because I need peace, ASAP. pray for your girl please, she’s going through a lot.
Till next time,
Dr. ETP xo
