UAE fights Covid: First Emirati male nurse urges more nationals to join healthcare

Abu Dhabi - Al Hammadi hopes to inspire many more nationals to pursue a career in nursing.

The first UAE national to be a male nurse, Majid Salim Al Hammadi, has been successfully balancing work and doctoral studies during the pandemic.

Currently, he is the charge nurse at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City (SKMC) operating room department.

Al Hammadi hopes to inspire many more nationals to pursue a career in nursing.His nursing journey started in 2015 when he joined Abu Dhabi Health Services Company (Seha) as an intern. For the next two years, he was on rotation in paediatric emergency, medical, surgical and operating rooms. In 2018, he began his master’s degree in managing care in perioperative and anesthesia practice from Cardiff University. In 2020, at the height of Covid-19 pandemic, Al Hammadi completed his postgraduate while learning to balance the demands of his job with studies. He is now doing a doctorate in nursing and midwifery.

“I am currently completing my doctoral thesis from Queens University Belfast. If it were not for the support and sponsorship of the Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge (Adek), and the Seha’s confidence in my abilities, I could not have attained these academic achievements.”

And his research for doctoral thesis is first of its kind, i.e., recording experiences and insights of Emirati nurses and gathering information on their advanced practices. Such data addressed a gap in evidence-based medical literature in the country.

He is shedding more light on the role of preventive and integrated healthcare. “We can only achieve this goal through empowerment of the community to take more charge of their health and arm them with the knowledge to curb the rising rates of chronic illnesses and obesity in the country.”