Good job. Saudi Arabia is really doing good in health care.
Only thing lacking in their health care system is, they haven't developed their own graduate medical education system.
They are just taking people from England and USA.
They should have to move towards their own graduate medical training programs.
You are very wrong and I don't know where you get this notion from.
The vast majority of all doctors in KSA are locals. That's the latest data from what I recall. Moreover KSA has 200.000 foreign students studying at American universities alone - only China, India and South Korea have more such students. In terms of per capita KSA have more foreign students enrolled at American universities than any other foreigners. Thousands of them are medical students, one of them being one of my elder sisters and many, obviously not all, return to work back home.
It is correct that there are also a significant percentage of foreigners, be they other Arabs, Westerners, non-Westerners, Muslims as well as non-Muslims. This is because of the relatively high salaries in KSA and because it is tax free which attracts many. Especially Muslims also for religious reasons.
I have been told, even on this forum, that many British/American people of Muslim South Asian ancestry that have been educated in the UK/USA are often willing to get jobs in KSA for those very reasons.
What you are right about though is that there is a shortage of Saudi Arabian nurses because people for some strange reason look down upon that profession which I find deeply annoying and pathetic since being a nurse is one of the most honorable jobs there can be for a woman.
Here is a article talking about this problem. That is why there are a lot of South Asian and Filipino (one of the best immigrant groups in KSA by far despite the majority being Catholics - really good people) nurses in KSA hospitals.
1 in 3 Saudis rejects nursing profession for women
DEFYING CUSTOM: Saudi society still looks down upon women opting for the nursing profession.
JEDDAH: RIMA AL-MUKHTAR
Published — Friday 7 February 2014
Last update 7 February 2014 6:21 am
The nursing profession for women is still frowned upon by almost a third of Saudi families because of customs and traditions.
This attitude is negatively impacting the majority of families who accept the profession.
Taqwa Yusuf, dean of the College of Nursing at King Saud University for Health Sciences at the National Guard in Jeddah, acknowledged that a small percentage of female nursing students gave up studying nursing due to family and community pressures.
Speaking at a press conference on the eve of an upcoming international conference on nursing in Jeddah, Yusuf said that many change professions after completing their studies.
Nursing, she said, is a costly discipline that the government spends huge amounts on, being a four-year course with a year’s worth of training. Changing professions would mean that state expenditure on this vocational course has gone to waste, she said.
Yusuf said that many nurses at National Guard hospitals have transferred to Ministry of Health hospitals owing to low wages, strict attendance and long working hours.
Nevertheless, the number of Saudi female students studying nursing has drastically increased since 2001, said Sabah Abu Zinada, assistant director of the nursing department at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center.
“Yet figures mean nothing since Saudi nurses are mostly found in major cities such as Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam. We face a shortage of female nursing staff in other smaller cities because their culture is against it,” she said.
“Families don’t allow their daughters to work as nurses because the job calls for long working hours, interacting with male patients and working night shifts at the hospital,” she said.
What has proved to be an even bigger challenge than societal perception, however, is getting qualified.
“Nursing departments at most universities and colleges are underfunded. The nursing major is usually subsumed under medical or medical sciences majors, which receive the lion’s share of the budget,” said Abu Zinada.
“The nursing profession is skills-based, which means students must spend a lot of time working at clinical laboratories and out in the field. Training programs are not available at most universities and colleges. What you end up with is a bunch of under-qualified nursing graduates,” she said.
After graduating, nurses enter into the real world, where they have to work up to 12 hours a day and stay up all night at the hospital. “This kind of pressure is not welcomed in our society and women are not used to sleeping outside their homes. Doctors, by contrast, get to go home and even do their jobs over the phone,” said Abu Zinada.
“Societal pressure on working women prevails and women are routinely judged by their profession. This has prompted many nurses to switch to administrative roles within the hospital,” she added.
The conference, which will kick off on Feb. 11, will bring together 45 speakers and experts from countries including the United States, South Africa, Sweden, Egypt, Turkey and Malaysia.
The conference will focus on clinical education for nursing, identifying creative strategies for development and evaluating nursing education.
1 in 3 Saudis rejects nursing profession for women | Arab News — Saudi Arabia News, Middle East News, Opinion, Economy and more.
The latest numbers I have seen of the 120.000 nurses working in KSA is that 30.000 of them were locals while the rest were expats.
90,000 nursing jobs available for Saudis
JEDDAH — There are 120,000 nurses working in the Kingdom, of whom 90,000 are expatriates who can be replaced by citizens, said Dr. Taqwa Umar, dean of the Nursing School, King Saud University. At a press conference held Wednesday at the school to discuss the first global conference on clinical nursing education due to be held on Feb. 11-12, Umar said there are vacant positions for Saudi nurses who want to enter this line of work. She said clinical nursing is the most needed field in the Kingdom and that is why the conference will give this topic a lot of attention.
90,000 nursing jobs available for Saudis | Kingdom | Saudi Gazette
