Poor remuneration and demanding workloads are driving Nigerian physiotherapists to seek employment abroad, Dr Esther Ibeye has disclosed; she warned that the pressure is creating another cycle of professional migration from the country’s healthcare system.
Ibeye, a physiotherapist, made the disclosure during an interview on Channels Television’s The Morning Brief on Tuesday, while discussing the state of physiotherapy practice in Nigeria.
She said professionals who feel overworked without adequate financial reward increasingly consider relocating to countries where their workload is better matched by compensation.
“I think this is even more like it is feeding back to the Japa cycle,” Ibeye said.
She explained that the situation becomes particularly discouraging when practitioners handle large numbers of patients without sufficient institutional support.
“When someone feels they are doing a lot of work, and they are not well compensated for it, they start thinking of actually leaving for other countries,” she stated.
Ibeye also drew attention to the physical demands attached to physiotherapy, saying the profession requires practitioners to spend much of their working hours walking, standing, demonstrating exercises and physically supporting patients.
Unlike some clinical duties that can be performed with limited movement, physiotherapy often requires sustained physical interaction between practitioner and patient.
She said the workload in public hospitals can become excessive, with one physiotherapist sometimes attending to five to seven patients in a day, or even more.
“In a public hospital, we could have just one physiotherapist attending to 5 to 7 patients, and some people are more than that in a day without so much support,” she said.
According to her, such staffing pressure can affect the attention given to individual patients because physiotherapists may have to move repeatedly between several people who require different forms of assistance.
“Sometimes we have physiotherapists running from one patient to the other, whereas they are supposed to pay attention to one patient at a time,” Ibeye explained.
She highlighted the particular needs of patients with poor balance and coordination. She noted that such individuals may require a physiotherapist to stay close while they relearn basic movements such as standing and walking.
The situation, she suggested, places both the practitioner and patient under unnecessary strain.
Her comments came as the global health community marked World Physiotherapy Day, an occasion that highlights the contribution of physiotherapy to healthcare.
Ibeye said the profession plays a critical role in helping patients regain physical function after illness, injury or other conditions that affect movement.
“The government really has to invest in physiotherapy care in Nigeria.
“We have to support physiotherapy because it’s a really vital part of healthcare,” she said
She added that healthcare delivery could not function effectively without professionals who help patients regain mobility and independence.
“Healthcare can’t do without physiotherapy; it’s a profession that gets people back to function,” Ibeye noted.
Her remarks place professional migration within a wider concern about working conditions in Nigeria’s health sector. For physiotherapists, the combination of physically intensive duties, high patient loads and inadequate compensation can make overseas employment increasingly attractive.
Ibeye’s position is that greater government investment in physiotherapy should address not only the availability of services but also the conditions under which practitioners deliver them.
Better staffing, adequate institutional support and competitive remuneration, she indicated, would help create a more sustainable environment for physiotherapists and improve the quality of attention available to patients.
The central concern is therefore not simply that physiotherapists are leaving Nigeria. It is that persistent pressure within the profession could continue to make migration appear more rewarding than building a career within the domestic healthcare system.
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