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Hospital 'asks' nurses to take maternity leave

Justifying their stance, the hospital management says that patients, especially UAE national women, have objected to women at advanced stage of pregnancies being made to work instead of giving them a break.

In a complaint received at Khaleej Times hotline, Mohammed (name changed) alleged that a few days back, nurses at the hospital were made to undergo a pregnancy test which revealed that 15 of them were carrying.

"Since that time, the hospital management has asked them to proceed on maternity leave starting from the fifth month of their pregnancy onwards," said the complainant. He said that though he was not connected to the hospital directly, he was concerned about such actions.

"The nurses have been forced to stay at home without job and salary for over eight months," said the complainant adding that the nurses would only be paid 45 days maternity leave as per the UAE law, while they will not receive any salary for the remaining days of their leave.

Though nurses were not willing to openly express their feelings regarding the management's decision, sources at the hospital said that the decision was not welcome to any employee.

"The UAE labour laws do not allow what the hospital has done. Though none of us like it, we have to keep quiet because we might lose our jobs," said the source.

Under the UAE labour laws, all women employees who have served for at least one year, are entitled to 45 days maternity leave with full pay. And those who have not completed this period are entitled to 45 days' leave on half pay.

A lengthy explanation from the hospital management said, "Nurses are working in OPD, wards and operation theatres. All these places involve hard and strenuous work in the sense that they keep standing or walking during their duty hours which are for eight hours.

More often, the pregnant nurses had complained about backache, not feeling fresh, feeling sick apart from several other complaints. Quite a number of them informed at the 11th hour that they are not feeling well. This results in non-availability of a particular nurse, while no other nurse can be arranged under such conditions. As a consequence, patients are liable to suffer."

Elaborating, the management stated: "As pregnancy progresses, the nurses look uncomfortable and their reflexes slow down. Doctors have reported problems of their departmental nurses which again affects patient care. There had been instances where patients especially the elderly local ladies, had vigorously objected to the hospital putting ladies with advanced pregnancy to look after the patients rather than giving them a rest."

They also said, "Every patient’s health matters and the hospital is obliged to impart best healthcare to them to ensure their absolute well-being. This can only be made possible by doctors, nurses and technicians of the hospital. If any one category is not fully involved and extremely attentive, this may lead to a disaster as we are dealing with human life.”

The statement further added, “In fact, our hospital is among the few of its kind which provides maternity leave benefits free of charge to our staff. Keeping this as our objective, we prefer to advise our female pregnant staff to proceed on leave after six months for the betterment of mother and growing foetus and also to ensure that the patient care is not affected due to their daily talk of being unwell. They can rejoin their duties only after delivery even if they have not been working on hospital visa but husband's visa."

• UAE