JEDDAH, 18 April 2004 — A male Saudi nurse has been awarded the 2004 Silver Shield Award of Nasibah bint Kaab for outstanding nurses. The award was set up by the Gulf Cooperation Council to encourage local nurses.

Nurse Redwan Brisali of Ajyad Hospital in Makkah said the award was a great encouragement to serve his patients better and thanked the hospital and his colleagues for their backing.

Hospital Director Dr. Muhammad Al-Habash praised Brisali’s work and dedication to his patients and his personal efforts in the training programs and active participation during Haj.

Maisa Muthhar, the nursing management director at the hospital, said the award reflected the true level of nursing services here and the support they received from the Ministry of Health.

Brisali gained his nursing diploma in 1987 from the Health Institute in Makkah and is now assistant to the nursing management director. He will accept his award at a ceremony in Qatar during the sixth annual Gulf nursing seminar.

Not many Saudi men choose to go into nursing for reasons including social pressure; nursing is widely seen as a woman’s job. However, Dr. Abdul Aziz Al-Homaidhi, director of academic and training affairs at King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Jeddah, said it was also a question of convenience. While female nurses can look after men and women alike, it is difficult for a male nurse to nurse female patients.

Saudi regulations require a male doctor to be accompanied by a female nurse, so a certain quota of women is needed in the job. But the high demand for nurses — 70,000 in public hospitals alone — means almost three quarters of job applicants with a diploma from the Ministry of Health are male, according to Dr. Al-Homaidhi.

But there is a problem with qualifications. The public nursing colleges here offer nursing degrees only for women. The only alternative for men is the health institutes, whether public or private, which offer a diploma. With a diploma they cannot pursue a postgraduate degree that would allow them to go after senior administrative jobs.

While public health institutes provide high-quality training because of access to hands-on clinical training at public hospitals, most private institutes do not. Their graduates — male or female — are usually not up to standard. “They are high-school graduates who receive basic training at these private institutes, and they have very little experience because these institutes don’t have clinical settings. We are beginning to suffer from that,” Dr. Al-Homaidhi said.

Health Minister Dr. Hamad Al-Manie recently announced the ministry was looking at upgrading the certificate of the public health institutes from a diploma to a bachelor’s degree in an effort to encourage Saudis to pursue a nursing career.

The ministry also wants to increase student enrollment in colleges and health institutes from 200 to 5,000. It is also attempting to send more postgraduate students abroad.

Saudi nurses make up 28.3 percent of nurses in the Ministry of Health and only 0.8 percent in private hospitals.