Ministry announces salaries of up to Dh20,000 per month

The Ministry of Health and Prevention (Mohap) is offering attractive salary packages for those studying and specialising in nursing sector.

Looking to increase the Emirati nursing staff in hospitals, the ministry recently announced that it would pay upto Dh20,000 monthly salary to fresh Emirati graduates from its affiliated nursing colleges.

The ministry is also offering to take care of the tuition fees, housing and transportation costs of Emirati nursing students. It is offering a monthly allowance of Dh4,500 to Emirati students in nursing colleges and will further award them scholarships if they want to study for higher degrees in nursing profession such as master’s and doctorate in the UAE or abroad.

While the Covid pandemic triggered job losses, salary cuts across sectors, certain sectors are seeing a surge in job opportunities and are in high demand due to the nature of work associated with them.

A noticeable increase in the demand of nurses is observed across the country as private and government organisations put out ads and announcements seeking qualified nurses. The most recent one was by the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) that announced vacancies for nurses. In a social media post, the authority said it is looking for nurses to join on a three-month contract that can be extended. Benefits include financial incentives of up to Dh8,000 per month.

This comes a few days after a similar post titled “Urgent Hiring” by the country’s health ministry, where the ministry posted that it was seeking qualified intensive care unit (ICU) nurses on a temporary contract to work in government hospitals in Sharjah, Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah.

The eligibility criteria stated: “Candidates must have a valid registered nurse license in their home country and at least two years’ experience working in ICU. And only nurses currently residing in the UAE and those with a tourist/visit visa or residence visa can also apply.”

Salary offered for the ICU nurses, the Mohap said in the post, would be Dh9,000 on a monthly basis.

Nurses in high demand, say private hospitals

Private healthcare players also confirmed that they are also currently on a hiring spree as demand of nurses has been growing at a higher rate than ever before — these include all nursing healthcare professionals — critical, non-critical care and homecare.

Among the several factors contributing to this phenomenon, Sarah Ilyas, chief nursing officer at Aster Hospitals – UAE, said Covid played an integral part.

“Certainly, demand for nurses has exponentially gone up as the need to look after Covid inflicted patients is on increasing trends. We are mostly hiring nurses with ICU experience with higher skill set but are not limited to that as we are also hiring emergency care nurses and medical surgical ward experience nurses too. We are not very particular on specific area of expertise because once they come on board, we enroll them in upskilling programs, assessments, so we are able to upgrade the nurses’ competencies according to the assignments.”

VPS Healthcare Group Spokesperson stated that the requirement for qualified medical staff in the UAE has always been on high. “With the Covid-19 pandemic, the demand for healthcare professionals has been more, particularly nurses who have experience in critical care. We too are hiring experienced registered nurses for our hospitals in Dubai and other emirates now. At present, we are hiring registered nurses with a minimum of two years of experience in critical care - ideally, people who have experience working in the ICU and emergency department.”

Confirming an uptick in hiring at the Canadian Specialist Hospital in Dubai, Gopinath S, Chief Strategic Officer at the hospital, said: “Despite no job cuts for us last year, we recruited nurses recently as there is a high demand to serve the increasing number of patients in general. However, the demand for nurses has increased in hospitals to take care of the increased number of patients suffering from other diseases as well. We recruited nurses mainly for the specialities like intensive care, emergency, isolation ward and regular floor nurses.”

Dr Amit Singh, head of corporate human resources at Aster DM Healthcare, confirmed to Khaleej Times that they are hiring nursing healthcare professionals. “There is a need of 500 plus nursing professional to support our current needs and future needs for the year. All nursing healthcare professionals are in demand - critical, non-critical care and homecare. Maximum demand is for critical care nurses for our hospitals, while there has been an additional demand to manage the current capacity in vaccination and Covid care too. Aster is currently trying to address these changes through rapid cross skilling of the nurses and upskilling to meet the immediate demands.”

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