He shared that it was challenging to balance his love for comedy with the demands of nursing, especially as the numerous deaths and accident cases he witnessed during his time at Suntreso Hospital in Kumasi deeply affected him.
Speaking on The Delay Show,Ben South recounted his decision to pursue comedy, which he felt brought joy to him and his fans.
Why he quit
"I couldn't blend the comedy job with nursing, so I had to choose one, and I chose comedy. As a content creator, your mind must always be ready for content. While I was at the hospital as a national service personnel, I started in the Emergency Ward. There were lots of deaths and accident cases, and whenever I got home, I’d feel sad thinking about the deaths and accidents that had happened at the hospital."
Ben South shared a particularly emotional experience: "I remember a pastor I was taking care of died in my arms. He was brought in during the evening, and by the next morning, he had passed away. I was the first person his wife met, and she asked me how he was doing, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what had happened. I was very sad after that incident and kept thinking about it at home. Incidents like that are why I decided to leave nursing. Maybe I'll return to it someday."
When asked if he hadn’t anticipated this aspect of nursing, Ben South explained, "I trained as a psychiatric nurse, working with people who have mental health issues, which can be a humorous experience. There’s a mental health condition called pseudobulbar affect (PBA). With this condition, a patient can laugh uncontrollably for about 30 minutes even when nothing funny is happening. Imagine being in a hospital with someone laughing for that long—you might end up laughing with them! So psychiatric nursing can be fun. You can even get content from psychiatric patients, which is why I preferred it to general nursing."
However, his mandatory rotation during National Service included other wards, which he found difficult to handle.