DR. WHO?
MEMBER SPOTLIGHT
OLUGBEMISOLA OBI, MD
Aaron Burch
D
r. Olugbemisola Obi’s roots are in Nigeria, but she has made a
home and raised a family in Louisville, Kentucky.
Dr. Obi was born in Baltimore, MD, as one of five siblings. It was
there that her father, an OB/GYN, was completing his residency.
In the 1960’s, most physicians in Nigeria were traveling to England
for post-graduate work because Nigeria was a British colony. Dr.
Samuel Ayangade decided he didn’t want to follow everyone else. So
instead, he applied to hospital systems in America and completed
a post-doctoral fellowship program at Johns Hopkins.
Some of Dr. Obi’s earliest memories were of her father coming
and going at odd hours. By age five, she knew that she wanted to be
a doctor just like him. “There was this strange man who was rarely
at home. He was always on call, but I thought that was cool. I just
wanted to be whatever he was,” Dr. Obi remembered. “Whenever
he wasn’t on call, he’d always take us to the park. He’s made home
videos of us. He made time even though he was working a lot.”
After her father had completed his training, the family returned to
Nigeria when she was seven. It was common for physicians to return
after completing their post-graduate work to give back to their home
country. “We moved to a little town in the south-western region of
Nigeria, where there was a mission hospital started by Americans.
My father worked there for a year before he moved to a position at
Obafemi Awolowo University,” Dr Obi’s own medical alma mater.
“It was a challenge to move to Nigeria, because we didn’t speak the
language. I was lucky because I was in 2 nd grade, and where I went
to school, they were just starting to teach English. So I was the star
pupil because I spoke the best English and had an accent,” she said.
“People are very welcoming in my culture. So, the fact that I looked
like them
but sound-
ed strange
was very
interesting
to them. I didn’t really have a problem assimilating.”
When not in school, Dr. Obi kept her nose in books. She said
she read anything she could get her hands on, but one favorite was
“Roots: The Sage of an American Family” by Alex Haley. “I read
that book 12 times. Finally, my mom found me reading it, and she
made me go out to a friend’s house rather than stay in. She said,
‘I want you to get out of the house, and go to a friend’s house and
when you get back, tell me what you did!’ So I walked a couple of
miles, had a nice time with friends and came back. But I didn’t do
that again,” she laughed.
Medical school in Nigeria in the 1980s was based in self-study
and text books. There were lectures rather than slideshows, chapter
memorization rather than technology. “You were not well read un-
less you had memorized the whole of Avery’s or Nelsons’ Textbook
of Pediatrics. I was trained by senior resident physicians who could
quote the whole textbook for you. Basically, that’s all we had. We
didn’t have the technology so you had better know the substance,”
Dr. Obi recalled.
In Nigeria, one or two years of post-graduate education is required
before a student become a full-fledged practicing physician. Dr. Obi
completed a one year rotating internship of specialties and earned
her medical license. Typically, she would have then been required
by the Nigerian government to work in an underserved area if she
(continued on page 34)
Editor’s Note: Welcome to Louisville Medicine’s member spotlight section, Dr. Who? In the interest of simply
getting to know each other as a society of colleagues, we’ll be highlighting random GLMS physicians on a
regular basis. If you would like to recommend any GLMS physician member to the Editorial Board for this
section, please e-mail [email protected] or call him at 736-6338.
MAY 2017
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