Why I Chose a Career in Health Care
By Olusegun Ajayi:
My journey into health care was far from straightforward. As a Black boy growing up in a community with little-to-no access to quality health care, I have witnessed firsthand the suffering endured by most African families, especially in those places where hospitals are far beyond reach. Where facilities are poor and dilapidated. Where professionals are as scarce as rain in the Sahara Desert.
It is always an excruciating experience to watch people you know personally and intimately as family, friends, or family friends writhe in pain and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.
The bitterness of those horrible experiences fueled my juvenile criticisms. By the time I was in junior secondary school, I had already developed a strong resentment for the Nigerian health-care system. I would always seize the slightest opportunity to condemn doctors and criticize nurses anytime the topic of discussion was health-related, especially in debate and essay competitions. No one could have told me that I would ever wear scrubs or put on the uniform of a student nurse with so much pride and a great sense of responsibility. "Me, become a nurse? God forbid I become one of those heartless people," I would have said without hesitation.
But as usual, and shockingly unexpected, life has a way of reshaping our minds and convictions with truths too clear to deny and realities too heavy to escape.
My turning point came when my sponsor, guardian, and beloved grandfather sustained a brain injury following a road accident in October 2025. I spent more than five months moving with him from one hospital to another—both government and private.
My resentment began to crumble in the face of reality. My grandfather was still in the ICU in (OAUTHC) Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex after his third brain surgery when the first tragedy that shifted my mind struck: a young and vibrant female doctor, exhausted and overworked, passed away in her prime. Patients, relatives, and colleagues mourned her gentle smile, her humility in service to humanity, and her hardcore dedication to saving lives. Standing there, still and speechless, I was shaken to my core. That very moment made me question where my old, narrow-minded notions came from. Maybe from Nollywood, from quacks, or from the very few black sheep who are trying to tarnish the golden image of health care.
In contrast to my long-held myopic view, what I saw up close was that the very health-care professionals I had condemned for donkey's years of ignorance were, in truth, the most selfless and sacrificial beings God ever created. The nurses in OAUTHC are living proof that nurses are the most caring people on Earth. They took good care of my grandpa, treated us—his relatives—with utmost respect, and embodied compassion in every gesture. Their warm hearts and caring hands did not only nurse my grandpa but also ignited a passion that steered me toward the most noble profession in the history of humanity.
I could have become a lawyer, just like my mother wanted me to be, because she believed my energy to question everything and argue with everyone was better suited for the courtroom. Who will tell my mother it is not every lawyer that will stand before a judge to defend the innocent or ensure that the guilty don't go scot-free—that some of us will defend and protect our clients from a different kind of crime and send the perpetrators of deadly evils on a journey of no return?
I could have become an engineer like my grandpa. But who will tell my grandfather that not all engineers have to fix machines, hold cold metal and ordinary steel, have to build electronics, cars, houses, bridges, and skyscrapers. Some can fix a crumbling life, hold a fading breath, and build something softer and more precious than automobiles.
I could have become a teacher if only during my five years of seeking admission to higher learning I had accepted my school proprietor’s offer of a 50% scholarship to study at a college for education. But who will tell my boss that not all teachers teach mathematics, English, or science? Some teach the simple science of compassion and the fine art of living to a dying soul.
I could have become a physiologist if I had not rejected an admission to study physiology at one of the most prestigious Nigeria universities. But why? Because the only profession that is capable of containing the spirit of a writer, a poet, a lawyer, an engineer, a teacher, a debater, a physiologist, a passionate and compassionate soul like mine in one body had already chosen me.
Of course, I am talking about nursing—the pillar of every healthy and sane society, the backbone, the very spine that holds the health-care system together.
The most haunting part of this beautiful journey, like in every beast and beauty story, is that my greatest supporter, my grandpa, died in UNIOSUN Teaching Hospital just two months after my resumption into OSun State College of Nursing Sciences, Asubiaro in Osogbo, on February 17, 2025.
Olusegun Ajayi is a Nigerian bilingual poet, a certified technical writer, copy writer, creative writer and student nurse who resides in Osogbo, Osun State. A finalist and shortlisted for the 2026 Kalanithi Writing Awards, Poetry Mine (2026). Longlisted for the 2026 Verse and Voice Competition (The Classical Association) and the 2025 JAY Lit Awards. His works have been in Book of Matches, Whims of the Wilderness, Writing Café Journal, Tap into Poetry Magazine, Journal of African Youth Literature (JAY Lit), Penned In Rage Literary Journal (UK), Ila Magazine (USA), Rincon Poetico (Columbia) and elsewhere.
You can find him on Facebook @olusegun.ajayi.148 and Instagram @olusegun.ajayi.
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