My January 15th, 2022 experience at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital (Ridge) has left me permanently convinced that indeed what makes a professional in the truest sense, irrespective of their field of practice is the dedication to their calling, gifted hands or not.

Pregnancy and childbirth are the stuff of beauty. I mean this in the sense of how a woman conceives, how her body morphs from one trimester to another through to labour, delivery, post-delivery and back. Through it all,(the cuts, scars, physical and emotional) it sure will be fascinating to see this in one panoramic take or in a timelapse. It is a natural art form unlike many the creator performs with mankind.

This however can turn into a nightmare in an instant if, at the health facilities, one’s obstetrics and gynaecology specialist reneges on his/her role to set the requisite tone for the experience a family but most especially, a woman should have.

This was how I came to notice Dr Frederickson Pobee, Obstetrician/Gynecologist of the #GARH(Ridge) affectionately called Dr Pobee.

Flashback

It was a Saturday morning in November of 2012 when I attended ante-natal clinic with my wife. This was our second pregnancy so I wasn’t entirely new to this project. My wife who was herself a Staff of GARH(Ridge) at the time, hinted earlier that this Doctor was the “Nurse’s Gyne”.

So much preferred and recommended by both the usual clientele and female Nurses alike that it was difficult to imagine how anyone devoid of empathy and a sense of duty could survive the onslaught on his consulting days.

As we arrived at the GARH(Ridge) and walked from the car park which doubled as the open-air canteen for the public(this was the Old Ridge before the major facelift), towards the respective consulting area, I couldn’t help but observe the relief on the faces of colleague Nurses of my wife who had just found out in the course of the pleasantries that Dr Pobee was in her corner.

If I thought my earlier observation the highest point of comfort to a husband of a pregnant wife, then the many nuanced conversations I eavesdropped on as I sat in the waiting area to the consulting room from different shades of voices of different women at different stages of their pregnancies were beyond rave.

I entered the consulting room right behind my wife at our turn. To cut a long story short, being one who only confirms what he’s experienced, (ahem! by the way, my name is not Thomas) I left the consulting room that morning in deep thought of what I had witnessed. To be honest, that was the morning and the first time I realized amongst others that I was in fact, a “stingy pamperer” of a husband to my pregnant wife.

His sense of humour(perhaps another time, I’ll share his hilarious response to me when I told him I was considering vasectomy), humility, quality, standard, ability, and intelligence wrapped up delicately in a cushion of empathy was just another notch beyond rave and I daresay acclaimed will still not capture the depth of my experience of Dr Pobee’s style and work ethic that morning.

Back to the present

From the dusk of January 15th to the dawn of January 16th 2022, when our expected motions of childbirth suddenly turned unexpected and my wife had to be moved under emergency conditions from the labour ward to the obs/gyne theatre, then to theatre recovery and finally postnatal ward at the GARH(Ridge), it was the calm, stable and experienced hand of Dr Frederickson Pobee that led and won the day as God instrument.

Out of my appreciation of a craft so deeply honed in both habit and spontaneity, underwritten in trust and so excellently displayed over the years as I have witnessed since that fateful morning in November of 2012 and surely before then, I couldn’t help but acknowledge this gem the best way I know-how…..write about him.

They say no one is indispensable in a workplace and that everyone can be replaced on a job but I have no doubt in my mind that any facility that employs the services of Dr Frederickson Pobee, Obstetrician & Gynecologist could ill afford to confirm this rather popular assertion and indeed replace a man, a professional of the calibre of Dr Frederickson Pobee, Obstetrician & Gynecologist of the GARH(Ridge).

Kudos to all professionals like Dr Pobee but whom I haven’t had the privilege of experiencing. Be encouraged in the face of the challenges and own this tribute too because after all, you also live this calibre daily.