AMMAN — Low
wages and long working hours are keeping away hundreds of Jordanian nurses from
taking up jobs in private hospitals, said Khalid Al-Rababah, president of the
Jordan Nurses and Midwives Council.
اضافة اعلان
He told
Jordan
News that he objected to a call by private hospitals on the Ministry of
Health to allow them to recruit nurses from abroad on ground that there is a
shortage of nurses in the Kingdom.
He said there is
almost 6,000 nurses who are on the waiting list of the Civil Service Bureau who
are eagerly awaiting to be hired. But he added that some of them are leery of
the working conditions at private Jordanian hospitals, namely due to being
overworked and underpaid.
“We asked the
hospitals many times to minimize the working hours for nurses to 40 per week,”
he said. “We also asked them to enroll their workers in the Social Security
Corporation’s programs.”
He said other
council demands included giving a nurse a monthly salary of JD500, and “also
pay extra for the night shifts they take to encourage them to work harder.”
Naser Al-Majali,
the executive director of the Private Hospitals Association, said private
hospitals were requesting to import medical staff from abroad because there is
a shortage of experienced needed to work in healthcare institutions across Jordan.
“There is a
shortage of nurses, especially experienced nurses, such as clinical, critical
care, and emergency response nurses,” he told
Jordan News.
“Therefore,
private hospitals are requesting experienced nurses from abroad to maintain
their high quality of service,” he noted.
Majali said that
during the COVID-19 pandemic, the government hired nearly 2,500 experienced
nurses in public hospitals, while Gulf Arab counties recruited another 2,000.
Rababah said some
1,400 fresh graduates from Jordanian universities join the industry each year,
and some of them get connected through the council with employers in Gulf Arab
states.
“Some countries
hire Jordanian nurses, and I don’t see any added value for private hospitals to
request nurses from abroad,” he said.
“It’s either for
showing off that they have foreign nurses, or since it may be financially more
feasible to hire foreign workers because of their lower wages.”
Taleb, a nurse
working in a private hospital, who preferred not to be identified further, said
many of his colleagues are skeptical about working for private hospitals.
Citing his own
problems, he said he was not paid his salaries for two months this year.
“Since the
COVID-19 pandemic, work conditions in private hospitals took a sharp turn to the
worse,” he revealed.
“Some hospitals
banked on patients from Arab countries, whose numbers dwindled since the
pandemic, and even some Jordanians have opted for home care for fear of being
infected with the virus,” he said. “This resulted in debt and financial
problems to hospitals.”
He maintained
that some nurses still find working for private hospitals better because of the
broader opportunities of being contracted by some patients, who seek continued
medical care at home following hospitalization.
Ali, a registered
nurse in a public hospital, said public hospitals have enough nurses, who are
overworked.
“Public hospitals
face a major issue in management,” he said. “The nurse takes on management
tasks that takes the time which should be dedicated to patients.”
Rababah said that
his council was following up closely issues related to nurses’ working
conditions, such as delayed salaries and long working hours, with the concerned
authorities, primarily the Ministry of Labor.
But he warned, if
employment conditions were not improved at private hospitals, “we will ask the
nurses to stage strikes and we will have their wages paid through us”.
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