A nurse is on duty in this file photo. A shortage of nurses in hospitals and health centers has led to the Ministry of Health (MOH) retraining nurses, or recalling and reassigning those who were laid off in the past. — Courtesy photo Saudi Gazette report
MADINAH — A shortage of nurses in hospitals and health centers has led to the Ministry of Health (MOH) retraining nurses, who currently occupy administrative jobs, or recalling and reassigning those who were laid off in the past, Al-Watan reported. A source from Makkah Health Affairs said due to the shortage the ministry is taking these measures. “The directorate received an overwhelming number of requests from hospitals and health centers demanding nurses. The shortage is affecting the workflow and quality of service. Patients care is affected due to the shortage and nurses are overworked,” said the source. He added the hospitals have begun to retrain the new nurses as some of them had administrative jobs while recalling some of them who were laid off in the past. “We are stopping job transference for nurses at the moment. We cannot afford to lose more nurses,” said the source. Madinah Health Affairs Nursing Director Dr. Khalid Al-Jehani said job transference is a process in which the employee applies to be transferred to another public health establishment and the director obliges whenever the desired position is available. “We have a shortage of nurses because there are many services which lack professionals in the field so we had to employee nurses to fill in the job. The nurses currently offer medical, mental and social care for the patients and their families which is overwhelming for the nurses,” said Al-Jehani. He added the nurses are trained in all of the mentioned services but they are not specialized in them. “The current medical staff only consists of doctors and nurses when we need more specialists constituting the medical staff. Nurses should not handle certain services and operations, such as vaccination. Nurses should be available to aid the doctors,” said Al-Jehani. He also said the directorate noticed a big shift in nurses to administrative roles. “Many of the nurses were given administrative jobs by their own hospital management due to shortage of administrative employees. That would explain the sudden shortage of nurses they faced. The directorate has ordered to retrain and reassign the nurses in hospitals and has stopped any job transference requests for the time being,” said Al-Jehani.
