Council to burnish nursing's image

The challenge in encouraging more Emiratis to join the nursing profession is due to a perception of nursing as a low-wage, low-status job with limited career opportunities. Link: New council to address the UAE nursing shortage.

ABU DHABI //The shortage of Emirati nurses stems from a widespread perception of the job as low-wage, low-status, and with limited career opportunities.

But these obstacles are gradually being surmounted, according to Dr Fatima al Rifai, the director of the federal department of nursing at the Ministry of Health.

Dr al Rifai is also secretary of the UAE Nursing and Midwifery Council, a body set up a year ago to address the shortage. The council plans to establish a foundation for professional governance and standards that are consistent with international best practices, she said.

By setting up separate scientific communities - education, practice and licensing and regulation - the council hopes to present nursing as an attractive profession, while increasing wages and providing nurses with better career prospects.

However, that is not yet the case, said Nurse Fadia, 23, who did not wish to give her full name. The Emirati graduated from a nursing programme at a local university just over a year ago. After struggling to find a job, despite being told repeatedly of a nursing shortage, Ms Fadia was finally hired at a government hospital in Abu Dhabi.

She said she does not enjoy her job. "It is not what I expected when I joined nursing," she said. "Many of my friends joined with me becºause we were being told it is a very attractive profession and very easy to find a job and to go far, but this is not what we experienced."

Ms Fadia said no job interviews were lined up for nursing graduates, despite promises they would be. "And now that I'm working, then what? There is no opportunity to specialise or to continue my education unless I go abroad," she said.

Ms Fadia's frustrations are echoed across the country. Masoumeh Kazemi, a registered nurse at Mideast Polyclinic in Dubai, said she knows of only one centre in the region - in Saudi Arabia - that allows nurses to specialise. "If I want to specialise in diabetes, paediatrics, intensive care, or to get my master's or PhD, how will I do it here? It is better for the health care of the entire country to allow nurses the chance to advance in their field," she said.

Dr al Rifai said the council's scientific communities - which include more than 120 representatives from all emirates, all health authorities, private and public health facilities, universities and nursing colleges - will address these concerns.

The education committee, for example, will address the need for career advancement by developing a unified specialisation model to guide education, practice and licensing in this area. "We are convening a large forum on specialisation on April 11 at the American Hospital in Dubai to outline a specialisation framework and define the criteria for speciality practice and recognition," Dr al Rifai said.

A lack of opportunities will mean a lower quality of nurses for the region, said Obaid al Jenaidi, president of the Emirates Nursing Association. "The Middle East's healthcare sector is growing rapidly, but this growth could be affected by the lack of trained nurses from national populations," he said.