Doctors’ anguish: Constant transfers, broken careers and families
Doctors who complain about systemic issues or lack of resources describe these arbitrary transfers, which often involve moving staff to facilities where their advanced skills are not utilised, as a 'tool of punishment and administrative chaos'.
Imagine being a highly trained specialist doctor, only to be moved from one hospital to another every few weeks without warning or reason.
Your children must constantly change schools, your family cannot settle anywhere, and your advanced medical skills are wasted in facilities that don't need your expertise.
This is the reality for doctors in Kiambu County, where a destructive pattern of transfers every Friday is systematically destroying medical careers and crippling healthcare services.
“What should be strategic staff deployment to meet patient needs has instead become a tool of punishment and administrative chaos.” Says Dr Janet. These constant relocations don't just disrupt our personal lives, but they also shatter our ability to build meaningful patient relationships and establish consistent treatment protocols.
He adds: “When a surgeon is moved every month, patients lose continuity of care, and years of medical training go to waste.
For highly trained specialists in Kiambu County, professional stability has become a luxury they cannot afford. Doctors described the environment as chaotic, where transfers occur "every week for five successive weeks," sending sub-specialists like urologists, maxillofacial surgeons, and Ear and Throat doctors to lower-level facilities where their advanced skills cannot be utilised.
"What this is doing is killing our morale, frustrating us and causing a lot of inconvenience," explains Dr. Janet*, whose story exemplifies the systemic abuse. "We have children in schools, we have partners, and you can't keep changing residence all the time. We transfer to a place where we are not adding a lot of value, and transfer allowances are never paid."
Dr Janet* has unpacked and repacked his life twice in three years. Each time, the explanation remains the same: "service needs." Each time, the reality tells a different story, one of a healthcare system weaponising transfers to silence and waste expertise while patients suffer the consequences.
She has experienced this firsthand through transfers in both 2022 and 2025, with county officials offering only the vague justification of addressing service gaps.
"There is nothing like a service need. It's just a game of moving doctors around, causing a lot of inconveniences, especially if you are seen to be a person who speaks out and you are not happy or complain about the way things are going."
This is pushing specialised doctors to their breaking point while eroding the very foundation of quality patient care.
One physician, who requested anonymity due to fear of victimisation, detailed how his post-fellowship expertise was squandered when he was posted to a Level 5 hospital designated as a specialist centre that "never happened and never initiated any specialist services." Instead of utilising his advanced training, he found himself forced to send patients to outside facilities for basic tests.
"The county proposes to be offering services such as urology, oncology, maxillofacial, ENT and other disciplines, but we are underperforming, and a lot of these services are not offered in hospitals where we are transferred to work,” she said.
She adds: “Colleagues in the Ear, nose and throat (ENT) department do not have medical supplies to work with. Some of them presented budgets as far back as five years, but whatever they are asked for is not being bought.
Dr David, also a long-serving physician in Kiambu, echoed these sentiments, explaining that after specialising, doctors are often made to perform basic duties typically handled by junior medical officers and interns, and when one complains, they are met with transfers.
This tactic, he says, is a form of "mental torture" aimed at frustrating doctors and preventing them from complaining.
“Let’s say you are an obstetrician/gynaecologist, you are expected to go to the gynaecology ward and the maternity department and do roles that should be done by medical officers, such as doing vaginal examinations for expectant mothers. However, in an ideal situation, you are only supposed to be consulted when a problem arises,” he explains.
She adds: “If you are a pharmacist and you have done a specialisation, you will be expected to sit at the dispensing window with the interns as opposed to doing the clinical or administrative work which you have been trained for. And you are not supposed to complain about that.”
“It is not justified why you are getting a transfer from one station to the other. But if you are moved around erratically from one station to the other, it can be quite traumatising. When it comes to promotions, with a specialisation, you are supposed to be recognised as a consultant, but this is normally overlooked,” he explains.
Dr Anthony*, a gynaecological fellow, highlighted the personal toll of these disruptive transfers. Delayed promotions, denial of permission to pursue further studies and delayed pay as the reasons he finally chose to resign to save himself from mental stress.
Within two years of initial posting at a Kiambu County hospital, he was moved three times, despite significantly improving services and collections at the two hospitals he had served.
These unceremonious reassignments forced him to consider his family's schooling, working and living arrangements, a burden usually mitigated by government regulations that stipulate plausible reasons and limits for transfers.
“When I went to Thika Level 5 Hospital, I had already developed a lot of interest in gynaecology. So we were about five obstetricians and gynaecologists, but despite that, we could not provide gynaecological services. We were only doing obstetrics, meaning we were only providing services concerning pregnancy and childbirth,” he says.
At some point, he made a request to go for postgraduate studies, and the request was received with a lot of positivity. He applied for a private scholarship and got one. However, when the time came for being released, it became a game of cat and mouse. His medical superintendent would eventually inform him that his study leave had been rejected.
“The erratic transfers were also becoming a concern. You live in a place, but you’re not sure how long you’re going to be there. After every year, you’re getting a transfer, and the reason why you’re being given a transfer is not clear,” he says.
“On top of this, the salary I was getting at the time was equivalent to the one I had been getting as a medical officer before I went to do my postgraduate studies because they refused to promote me. After my study leave was declined, some people were granted a study leave in the same field that I was going into. I got fed up and resigned,” he says.
Ultimately, Dr Anthony decided to pursue his fellowship, prioritising his career growth and skill development outside of the county's dysfunctional system.
Several calls and text messages sent to Dr Patrick Nyaga, the County Health Officer, went unanswered.
