Dubai: Expatriate medical graduates who study medicine at UAE universities are unable to get a job in the country because they cannot complete the mandatory three-year practice at a health ministry hospital or clinic which is necessary in order to apply for a medical licence.
The Ministry of Health and the health authority in Dubai have assigned a very limited number of clinics that allow expatriates to practise. Furthermore, these graduates are forced to work without salary for the duration of the three-year practice.
The ministry of health and the health authority rules do not allow expatriate medical graduates to work in the country or apply for a licence to practise medicine until they complete the mandatory three-year practice in a clinic.
The graduates said they have studied medicine at universities in the UAE to become doctors, dentists or pharmacists but they cannot practise.
"We have to practise at clinics or hospitals for three years which means work those three years without salaries," said Riham who studied medicine in Dubai.
"I was born here and I studied here. My life dream is to become a doctor which has gone with the wind when I learnt I have to practise in a clinic before being able to apply for the medical licence in order to get a job here," she said.
Riham said there are only very few clinics who are given permission by the ministry to allow expatriate medical graduates to practise.
‘No room for me'
"I tried those clinics but all of them said they have no room for me," she said.
Riham who graduated five years ago said she worked for some time at an insurance company.
Another graduate, Ala'a from Palestine, who was born and raised here, studied medicine at a university here but was forced to go to another Arab country in order to practise medicine.
Ayman, an Egyptian doctor who graduated from an university in the UAE, is working as a cashier in a medical company. He said it is unfair as he studied in the UAE.
"We have to be given a chance like our Emirati colleagues," he said.
Ayman said that his Palestinian friend who is also a medical graduate is working at a fitness shop.
"I am practising now for almost three years in a clinic … without being paid a single dirham," said Rowaida from Egypt.
"I asked the doctors at the clinic where I am practising to pay me for transportation but they refused and they said the law did not ask them to pay for those who are under practice."
Amal, a mother of four said that her daughter started to study medicine here but when they came to know the rules she sent her daughter home in Egypt to finish her studies.
"We will all go back home when my daughter graduate as she worked hard all her life and she always wanted to be a doctor," the mother said.
Three years' training is mandatory
Dubai Dr Ameen Hussain Al Amiri, CEO for Medical Practice and Licence, Ministry of Health, told Gulf News that expatriate medical graduates need experience in order to apply for the ministry's exam in order to practise the profession here as per the UAE Federal law.
"Expatriate students who study medicine here need one year's training or what we call ‘internship' after graduation and then they need another two years which we call ‘two years' attachment' for all expatriate medicine graduates. And here I'm talking about expatriates only because Emiratis do not need this procedure," Al Amiri said.
He said Emirati medical graduates can work immediately after finishing their studies.
Al Amiri said that universities send the names of graduating students to the ministry and they do their best to find them places to practise at a government hospital for the two-year attachment.
"We find them hospitals in the emirates they live in," he said.
He said sometimes medical graduate students from outside the country come here to do their two-year attachment but the priority is given to students who graduate from the UAE.
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