Dubai nurses visit schools to persuade pupils to take up profession

To mark International Nurses Day, nurses visited schools in Dubai to speak to the pupils about the advantages of taking up the profession.

DUBAI // Nurses from Dubai Health Authority (DHA) have visited a number of schools to advocate choosing the profession as a career.

This week, more than 300 higher-secondary pupils took part in an educational programme to raise awareness about nursing.

Naeema Muallem, an Emirati nurse who has worked at Rashid Hospital for 16 years, was one of the speakers. She said: “This initiative was held to mark International Nurses Day and since we received excellent feedback from the schools’ students and administration, we decided to make the initiative a permanent one.”

She said there were numerous colleges in the UAE that offered nursing education, such as University of Sharjah, Higher Colleges of Technology, RAK Medical and Health Sciences University and Fatima College of Health Sciences.

Khadija Al Sulaima, an Emirati midwife who works at Latifa Hospital, said an advantage of the career was that nurses at DHA were encouraged to take up further educational studies.

“Nurses have various options of seeking further specialisations and this adds to their expertise. I worked in the maternity department at Latifa Hospital for three years and then decided to pursue a one-year midwifery course that was organised by the DHA along with the Higher Colleges of Technology in Dubai,” she said.

Also, as part of International Nurses Day, nurses from DHA took part in a question-and-answer session on Twitter, where people messaged in their queries about the profession under the hashtag #smart_clinic.