Medical professionals not ‘free’ to work in any emirate

Two-year clinical experience waived

Olivia Olarte-Ulherr

abu dhabi — Graduates of health-related courses in colleges and universities in the UAE are now exempted from the two-year clinical experience requirement as per the new professional qualification requirements (PQR).

“For non-locals we require a two-year experience before they get a license (post) internship... But now, we can waive these two years under one condition, if they spent the first two years of their experience (supervised) in a secondary or tertiary hospitals,” said Dr Khaled Al Jaberi, director of Health Regulation at the Health Authority – Abu Dhabi (Haad).

He was speaking on Sunday about the newly-implemented unified licensing process by the three health authorities — Ministry of Health (MoH), Haad and the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) — which was activated this month.

Previously, expat students had to go abroad to gain experience in their respective medical field before coming back to get a license to practice here. With the PQR, the health authorities have opened up opportunities for them to practice their profession here immediately after graduation and this is applicable in all healthcare-related fields including nurses, physicians, allied health and pharmacists.

The PQR, which is now posted on the DHA and Haad websites, also noted under special considerations that UAE nationals “are not required to have clinical experience post internship.”

The PQR, which came into effect starting October 12, is expected to unify not only the qualification requirements of the healthcare sector but also to unify the titles among healthcare professionals — meaning, a consultant in Dubai should have similar qualification to a consultant in Abu Dhabi.

“The priority here is the patients and the quality of care they are receiving,” Dr Al Jaberi pointed out.

“The main aim of the process is to unify. A patient going to a physician in Dubai and Abu Dhabi (would) at least know that both doctors are equally efficient. We put a benchmark so that somebody has to be within that qualification to be a consultant,” added Dr Hatem Faraj Al Ameri.

Another important aspect of the PQR is the revised years of experience required for doctors in the Tier 2 category — this was reduced from eight years to five years. Tier categories are based on the countries where degrees or qualifications were attained.

Tier 1 includes countries where medicine programmes were well-structured and more rigorous, so the requirements of the years of experience post qualification are lower (two years) than the Tier 2 countries. They include the American board specialities, Canada some degrees in the UK and South Africa.

In the PQR, new titles were also added including the laser and hair implants technician, provided they work in a clinic and medical centres.

“With this unification requirement, every candidate is given three chances to pass the exam all over the different healthcare facilities or healthcare authorities,” Dr Al Jaberi said.

With the new PQR, processing of license is also hastened. It now takes one week up to 40 days compared to 180 days (6 months) previously. Fast track processing is also applied for specialities where there is a gap.

According to Haad, there are now about 43,000 healthcare professionals in their system and they process between 5,000 and 8,000 new licenses every year; 50 per cent of these are nurses while 20 to 35 per cent (2,000-3,000) are physicians.

For the three quarters of this year, Haad already processed about 22,000 application transactions compared to 17,000 in 2013.

“This is a good sign that people would like to work in the healthcare sector in Abu Dhabi,” Dr Al Jaberi concluded.

olivia@khaleejtimes.com