When people wear hierarchy as a badge of honor, they literally stunt the growth of young doctors, especially in settings where resources are already limited.

I graduated from the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, Cuba in 2023, and have since returned home to serve my community. I am the first doctor from my village of Logwerle, Central Equatoria State, South Sudan, East Africa, and the first to speak four languages: Spanish, English, South Sudanese Arabic, and my own local language, Bari. The weight of those facts is not lost on me, and neither is the responsibility they carry. The contrast between where I was trained and where I now work has been striking. In Cuba, I rarely encountered this kind of gatekeeping. Here, it is far more prevalent.

The moment that crystallized this for me came during my internal medicine rotation, when I proposed a research project. One administrator’s response stopped me cold: “You are an intern. You are not supposed to write a research paper.” That response revealed everything. For me, research was never about prestige. It was about finding my voice, a space to document the stories and struggles that too often go unheard from this part of the world.

I am writing this because I know there are interns out there who are curious, eager, and full of ideas, but hierarchy is holding them back. We are living in an era where evidence is the loudest voice in medicine, and where artificial intelligence is turning what once seemed like distant medical dreams into reality. In this landscape, an intern showing genuine interest in research should be nurtured, not silenced.

The backbone of medicine is research. And research only thrives when young doctors are given the freedom to explore, to ask questions, and to write. This matters even more when you consider that writing is woven into nearly every aspect of a doctor’s life, from clinical notes to case reports to published studies.

We need dedicated research on how hierarchical culture in resource-limited settings impacts the development of young doctors. The voices from this part of the world deserve to be part of that evidence, and that evidence needs to be documented in real time, as it is lived and experienced on the ground, not revisited years later when the moment has already passed.

Buga Charles George Kenyi is a physician in South Sudan.