JEDDAH, 31 October 2007 — There are more than 3,000 male nursing graduates on the waiting lists for jobs, said Dr. Obaid Al-Obaid, vice minister for planning and development at the Ministry of Health.

Al-Obaid, who was speaking at a press conference at the King Fahd General Hospital yesterday, advised young graduates to think hard before deciding on becoming nurses.

The press conference was held on the sidelines of the second Nursing Symposium, entitled “Leadership for Change — Toward Nursing Success.”

Al-Obaid discussed the current condition of the nursing profession in Saudi Arabia and said that there are 49 nursing schools across the country, 23 of which are for girls. He added that the Kingdom suffers from a surplus number of Saudi male nurses and at the same time a shortage of female nurses.

“I’m ready to employ within two weeks any Saudi female nurse, regardless of whether she has graduated from a government college or a private one but on condition that she cannot choose the location of her placement. We try our best to employ female nurses in hospitals close to their homes. However, there cannot always be vacancies in those areas,” said the minister.

Saudi female nurses form only 35 percent of nurses working at hospitals run by the Ministry of Health. And Saudi male nurses make up 32 percent of nurses in the Kingdom and all of them work in government hospitals.

“The number of jobless Saudi male nurses will unfortunately increase by the end of this year to reach 6,000 to 7,000,” added Al-Obaid.

He said these figures don’t apply to private hospitals where the percentages might be different — probably lower. “Salaries in private hospitals are low so nurses don’t like to work for them,” he said.

The ministry is working on increasing the percentage of Saudis in the nursing field to reach 60 percent in the next five years.

Saudi Arabia lacks nurses qualified in rare specialties, such as in intensive care, kidney and emergency units. In light of this, the Directorate General of Nursing is currently offering courses on these specialties.

Due to the shortage of Saudi nurses, the Ministry of Health employs foreign nurses, who are described to be good but not the best.

“What hinders us from employing highly qualified foreign nurses is the low salary scale. Nurses prefer to work in the United States and the European countries, where they get higher salaries. However, we make sure that we employ capable nurses, who have qualifications no less than bachelor degrees. Most of them are from the Philippines, as they are known for being qualified to do the job,” said Al-Obaid.

In the past there was a problem of fake certificates with foreign nurses. The problem has been curbed as the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties makes sure certificates are verified.

Al-Obaid said the commission has instructed nursing schools to reduce the enrolment of male students by 70 percent this year. The directive was issued to limit the rate of unemployment among male nurses.

However, the institutions filed a complaint with the Court of Grievances, which ruled in their favor. Then some of the government-run nursing institutes have been closed in order to bring down the number of unemployed male nurses, Al-Obaid said.

Speaking about the quality of graduate nurses from the private institutes, Dr. Munira Al-Osaimi, general director of nursing at the Ministry of Health, said, “We employed a number of graduate nurses from private institutes and tested them according to our quality criteria. Some of them failed to meet the required standards.”

Statistics show that there are 79,994 working male and female nurses in the Kingdom, 42,628 of which are employed by the Ministry of Health.