JEDDAH — Dr. Walid Fitaihi spent 20 years in the United States before returning to Saudi Arabia to found Jeddah’s prestigious 300-bed International Medical Center (IMC). In addition to the ultramodern medical technology he was exposed to as a health care professional abroad, he also saw an integrated workplace where men and women professionals worked together to save lives and help thousands of people.
When the center opened late last year, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah commended the private sector for its great contributions to the nation’s health care and wished it every success. And success has come to the IMC in part because of the incredible contributions that women are making there.
Dr. Fitaihi, who serves as the center’s CEO and board chairman, said more than half of the staff is female. He says hiring women makes solid business sense because it gives him a staff on whom his patients can depend. “It is easier for me to find an intelligent, hard-working, dedicated Saudi woman than a Saudi man in the market,” Dr. Fitaihi told Arab News. “This has been my experience at IMC. We have more than 50 percent women working with us. They are successful because they, Saudi women, have a drive to excel and to prove to themselves that they can do it — and do it better. They have come up in a big way in the last decade. They have excelled in the professions they have chosen. I hear they are even excelling in colleges and in schools. They’re doing much, much better than their male counterparts.”
Opportunities abound for women in health care, Dr. Fitaihi said, particularly if society can eliminate its prejudice against nursing. “There is a global nursing crisis which will affect the health care in every single country in the world,” Dr. Fitaihi said. “Here in Saudi Arabia we have more than 90,000 nurses coming from abroad. That means we have 90,000 opportunities for Saudi nurses. Unfortunately, if you look at the number of nurses graduating every year, we won’t be able to meet our needs for a couple of hundred years.”
Despite societal taboos, the International Medical Center is one of several places where Saudi nurses are trained. “IMC joined with other hospitals and businessmen to start a not-for-profit Saudi institute for health care to graduate nurses, and it is already operational,” Dr. Fitaihi said. “It is a model for other health care institutes because it is a not-for-profit institute. It introduces the new concept of competition in Islam. That means rewards from God by trying to serve humanity and improve the quality of health care. So we have hospitals and businessmen coming together to set the example of what we call the Saudi Institute of Health Care. We are open to Saudis — both men and women. The idea is to encourage Saudi women to go into nursing. Right now, we have more than 100 students, but this is not going to solve the problem. We are trying to do whatever we can do in our circle of influence.”
He said the nation would be well served by some other circles of influence taking an interest in the nursing crunch. “This is a social problem and an economic one as well,” Dr. Fitaihi said. “It is also a health care crisis so the solution will not come from one ministry or one area. We need the private sector to invest in education and to give priority to education, education, education. We need the Ministry of Culture and Information to begin focusing on how to change our society’s perception of certain professions. They could be doing this by investing in TV serials that glorify and clarify the sacredness and values of nursing. There could be workshops and programs and so forth. That is the media aspect. The Ministry of Health could help by educating and creating legislation, policies, procedures and incentives. We need to have a master plan in which the problems are clearly identified and the solutions clearly defined. We need catalysts and driving forces - both at the government level and in the private sector in order to eliminate obstacles.”
Dr. Fitaihi notes that the most serious obstacles Saudi women face have nothing to do with religion. “It is really sad that even when we have the model for contribution and involvement of women in society in every aspect of it through Islam, we have not been able to implement it fully,” he said. “Khadija, the wife of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), was basically the CEO of her own company. She employed Prophet Muhammad who is the most valuable human being who ever lived on Earth. We have many other examples of women’s contributions in every aspect of life throughout Islamic history. Until recently, women in Saudi Arabia were not given the opportunity to practice in fields that Islam had granted to them. The good thing is that there are many new laws and changes that definitely will make a difference for working women in Saudi Arabia.”
The hospital CEO also is disappointed by society’s misplaced priorities. “When you see the number of malls being opened every day, it seems our motto should be to have one mall per citizen,” Dr. Fitaihi said. “There is hesitation to go into education and health care projects because they are more complicated, more demanding, and you have less profit. However, when you look at things in terms of fulfilling our objective on Earth, they are more profitable in terms of the reward from God and the significant impact they have on society. So my advice is that we should be focusing on education and health care.”
It may sound a little self-serving coming from a hospital CEO, but Dr. Fitaihi recommends that Saudi women looking for careers should consider the medical profession. “Health care is one of the areas in which Saudi women feel very comfortable,” Dr. Fitaihi said. “The environment is one of compassion - taking care of patients. The relationship between women and men is on a very high professional level and it is one of the areas in which I believe we have good women success stories. At IMC, we have been able to attract the most qualified of Saudi women, and we are able to produce a very difficult equation of providing high-quality health care affordable to all by tapping into the women’s work force. Part of this equation is mobilizing the resources of Saudi Arabia, and women are the main untapped resource in Saudi Arabia.”
