Haven written on the state of health care in Nigeria, it becomes paramount as well to write about the hurdles one must go through if one must earn the respect of a medical professional in this country. In as much as the health care sector in Nigeria is quite aback, it is still one of the most prestigious sectors in Nigeria, accorded more respect are her professionals, even with the high unemployment rate in the country, this field offers more opportunities than any other, this has stirred up the passion in the hearts of many Nigerian youths to study medical courses, as they see it as one sure way to escape poverty, although this does not guarantee a very wealthy life, but one which is comfortable is assured, this has caused the number of science students in the country to be on high side, of which most intend to study medical courses like; medicine, nursing, medical laboratory, physiology, physiotherapy, pharmacy e.t.c while others would fall in the engineering field. with a larger percentage intending to study medicine, the course becomes an hot-cake as it is being put, as many in terms of tens of thousands would put in for it in a particular institution with no more than 100 or at peak 150 students to be admitted, making it a very difficult course to be admitted into, one would probably think that only the brightest of all students should be found in the department as this field involves human life and so only the most intelligent students should be deserving of the honor, this is true but not absolutely, in a corrupt country like this, this same corruption has found its way into this system as well, there exists a mentality that top medical courses like Medicine, nursing e.t.c are meant for the rich, this is not as a result of the academic fees, but rather as a result of the elites in the society using their money and influence to put their children in these departments, indirectly displacing the bright and deserving students, so sad right?, no wonder an old man in Nigeria once said to a group of newly admitted medical students - "Thank God i would be dead before you become medical doctors", this might be sad and funny depending on your stand, but what the man said was only from the established corrupt tradition in the medical academic sector, as very dumb students could gain admission in as much their parents are very wealthy, thereby putting people's life in the hands of very dumb doctors, a soon reality that the old man had preferred death over, a reality closer than our yesterday as it causes no wave when a doctor is reported to have forgotten surgical instruments in the body of an operated patient, or when he diagnoses out of point.so sad. Getting back to our topic for the day,a medical aspirant must go through a series of exams at first to gain admission and then go through another series of professional exams in the course of medical school. One is required to at first have a minimum of 5 credits pass in the five core science subjects in SSCE, these are Maths,English.Biology,Physics and Chemistry, this could either be from the inter-west African countries exam, WAEC, or the local national exam in the country NECO. either of them are equally accepted with no special preference, and please note that these passes must be at a single sitting as combination of results to account for the five passes are not accepted, you want to save life?, so you had better be bright enough to get your papers cleared. Having settled the previous debt, one must further to sit for the joint admission and matriculation board examination, JAMB, an exam entailing four subjects which are English,Biology,Physics and Chemistry for the medical aspirant, each with a maximum score of 100, accounting for a maximum of 400 marks in total for the exam, for basic admission into any federal institution, one must score above 200, more like an average thing, but for medical aspirants, to increase your chances, a score of 300+ would be of great help as this would be used by the institution to calculate your aggregate at the end of the day for admission proper. At the onset, JAMB was all that was required in addition to one's SSCE result to gain admission into any institution, but with the growing number of university aspirants, this exam alone could not be used to ascertain admission merit, as lots of people could get very high marks here, and so most institutions went further to set-up their own examination known as POST-UNIFIED TERTIARY MATRICULATION EXAMINATION, commonly refferred to as post-utme or PUTME, this exam was a means for further screening of the aim to distinguish the best from the rest, this exam usually entails the four subjects one had sat for in jamb, but the basic difference is that it's peak score is 100, unlike jamb which is 400, although in most universities, the exam is still on the 400 scale. The university then divides the aspirant's jamb score by 8 and then divide his or her putme score by 2, summing both results would yield that which is called the aggregate which is on the 100 scale. this many a times are used by the institution for admission as only those whose aggregate score exceed a certain mark referred to as the cut-off mark is considered for admission, how perfect the system would seem to most, but that is not the case, as there have been several reported cases of people with a lesser aggregate score being admitted while those with higher ones are left out, the issue of corruption again raises its ugly head. For medical aspirant, most especially those for medicine and surgery, an aggregate score of 80+ might put one in a better position in terms of merit list. 80+ average in two external exams is no child's play, indeed meritted medical students should indeed be respected, as the case actually is in all universities, this is as a result of what they had gone through. After gaining admission into school of medicine or basic medical sciences, one must prepare one's mind for standard professional exams regulated by external bodies and invigilators, these exams are quite cumbersome and difficult as only few get to scale through, this would be the case for the couple of years one might spend studying, in the case of medicine, one should spend no less than 6 years which might eventually extend to 7 or 8 years depending on the annual ASUU strike, a sad story i must confess, but for most basic medical sciences, 5 years might be required or even more as well, after this, one is then awarded the MB;BS degree in terms of medicine and surgery, bachelor of medicine;bachelor of surgery to be more plain. After this a compulsory one year internship program must be undertaken by the individual in any hospital, after which he or she is required to serve Nigeria for one year before proceeding to further his or her studies in the country or abroad as usually is the case. the aim might to become a specialist, as they are accorded more respect and paid more in terms of salary as they have more knowledge in their field of specialization. quite a long journey which gets to span over 15 years in the long run, indeed doctors and medical experts should be respected.