NEWS FROM THE UAE
SOURCE : THE NATIONAL

Hundred Nurses Fail Competency Tests - Lose Jobs

ABU DHABI - Aug 19: More than 100 nurses from Al Mafraq hospital – one in nine of the total – have been told their contracts will not be renewed after they failed rudimentary competency examinations.

“The nurses weren’t very good and couldn’t pass a basic test,” said Gail Smith, the hospital’s chief nurse officer.

All of the nurses at the hospital were evaluated on their elementary skills, clinical work, customer service and work ethic.

Those with the best test results received wage increases, while those with the lowest scores did not have their contracts renewed.

The nurses, most of whom were seasoned staff members, were tested on routine subjects, such as how to dress a wound, administer oral medications and do a physical assessment on a patient.

“This is stuff that they do every single day – one would have thought that they know how to do that,” Ms Smith said. In the “eight, nine months that I’ve been here, I’ve been trying to give them the basics – like wash your hands”.

Twenty per cent of the nurses passed all of the tests and the hospital was working with those who had failed some portions of the evaluation to improve their skills.

“This is not advanced stuff,” said Ms Smith. “The advanced stuff is coming and we will teach them, but how do I teach the advanced stuff if they don’t have the basics? It was just the right thing to do for the patients and the community.”

Ms Smith said that she did not know the exact number of nurses who would be leaving the hospital, but that it was more than 100. Some nurses, however, said as many as 300 would lose their jobs – a claim denied by Ms Smith. The hospital’s administrators said all vacated positions would be filled.

Dr Mohammed Yaman, the chief medical officer at Al Mafraq, said those who had failed to meet the hospital’s standards had shown little enthusiasm for improvement.

“Their deficiencies were discussed with them and they were given the chance to improve themselves. People who didn’t, we said, ‘If your contract comes up, we are not renewing it’.”

Some nurses claim, however, that they were not given sufficient notice to prepare for the exams.

“They did not give us any time for review,” said one nurse, who broke down in tears. “They said there is no need to read because it is basic knowledge. They only gave us a week to prepare.”

The woman was the head of her unit. “Even doctors said she was good,” said another nurse. “They would go to her for advice. It was just done by lottery. No one knows why.”

Dr Yaman and Ms Smith said the hospital had given staff ample time and training in advance of the evaluations and that nurses had known about the process since last December.

Some nurses say that their contracts end on Dec 9, leaving them little time to find new jobs, let alone housing and schooling for their children.

However, Ms Smith said the notice periods varied and some nurses had been given up to six months and that the hospital would be flexible about termination dates.

Not all nurses at the hospital were upset at the move.

“We are sad for them,” said Nawal Awad, a staff nurse at the hospital. “But there are lots of changes that we have to keep abreast with. It’s not like if you’ve worked 20 years there is nothing new to learn. There are new technologies and new procedures.”

Irine De Souza, a staff nurse at the hospital, said: “The system was in sleep mode and we had to wake up and move with the changes. Medicine is not stagnant. As a nurse, I have to be updated with my knowledge.

“If nurses cannot do this stuff, which is so basic, I cannot trust to give my patients to that nurse.”

Aman Hasan, a nurse unit manager for paediatrics, agreed. “I would not give my baby to a nurse that I know has failed two tests. She might give the wrong medicine to my baby. I don’t want to face this situation.”

Doctors at the hospital had been advised not to speak to the media, but those who did speak, on condition of anonymity, said they were not happy with the decision to let the nurses go.

One doctor suggested the move was financially motivated and said many of those whose contracts had not been renewed were exemplary employees.

“Some of the nurses who were terminated were some of the best nurses, I can tell you. The nurses who were terminated, we had experience with them, we have been working with them for a long time. They were very good nurses.”

Many of the departing nurses have worked at the hospital for more than a decade and are now worried about their futures. “We have children,” said one nurse. “We have family. They are just throwing us out. All my life was in this country. I don’t know my own country.”

Another said: “You can tell us to go, and that we don’t need you, but not like this. Not you have failed and you don’t know the skills. This is not the way to remove us.”

Parents told curb young drivers

DUBAI - AUG 19: A police chief is urging parents to stop buying their sons powerful sport cars and paying their traffic fines after concluding that these have become major factors in the recklessness responsible for much of the carnage on the roads.

Col Saif Muhair al Mazrouei, the acting director of Dubai Police’s Traffic Department, said the indulgence of better-off parents – buying ever more expensive cars and picking up the bills – encouraged “nonchalant and dangerous” driving attitudes among young men.

During the first half of this year, 433 road accidents in the emirate, resulting in 65 deaths, were blamed on drivers aged from 18 to 28. This compares with 380 accidents, involving 47 deaths, in which the drivers accused of fault were aged 30 to 40.

In the same period, 40 people aged between nine and 26 were killed on the roads in the emirate while 541 were injured, 34 of them seriously.

Most crashes involving young people are said to occur as a result of speeding or recklessness on the part of drivers aged between 20 and 25, almost always male and often at the wheel of a vehicle costing hundreds of thousands of dirhams.

Col Mazrouei said a lack of personal responsibility was leading too many young drivers to act with little or no respect for other drivers.

“When young people see that their parents are prepared to buy them an expensive, fast car, pay for their unlimited fines and supply them with a generous allowance, then children fail to learn how to respect road laws,” he said.

It was time for parents to start taking responsibility for their children to help tackle a growing problem “which sometimes has devastating consequences”.

“Most of those affected are young, Emirati youth,” he said.

“This is really unfortunate, especially since the local population doesn’t even make up one million people.”

Young drivers who have to meet the cost of motoring out of their own pockets show greater restraint, he said. “Anyone who works to pay for their bills including their traffic fines can never be that careless.”

Col Mazrouei appealed to parents to show more firmness. “The biggest group of traffic violators is between 20 and 25 years of age,” he said. “They are usually high school and college students. Their reckless driving also puts other people’s lives at risk.”

As a mark of the authorities’ determination to apprehend more drivers violating traffic laws, 500 radars are to be installed on the main roads of Dubai in the coming months.

“They will be installed in Dubai’s most dangerous roads like Al Khail, Emirates, Sheikh Zayed,” he said. All will be operational – and regularly checked for evidence of infringements – by the end of the year. Speed limits have already been reduced, for example to 100kph for 140kph on Sheikh Zayed Road, in an attempt to deter lawbreakers.

“Most violations occur by young people,” Col Mazrouei said. “This is a problem we are suffering from because of parents who are not doing enough to discourage this behaviour. The real problem is with the parents of the young people who drive the cars.

“Some people buy their kids a new car every year. Not just a new one, but a faster, more expensive one.

“Adding to that, a generous allowance and paying for their fines, kids do not learn how to be responsible and adapt a careless and unchallenged attitude. We [the traffic department] regularly have parents who come in to pay their kids’ fine. It runs into thousands in some cases, but they pay it.”

“Parents should be more stern and teach their children responsibility. They should take a tough stance and if children [continue to break the law] they should cut their allowance and take the car away. This will force young people to respect the law because they will realise that the support is no longer there.”

Of a total of 147 road deaths in the Dubai emirate from January to June this year, the victims included 50 Pakistanis, 37 Indians and 22 Emiratis.

Last March a car crash in Al Ain claimed the lives of 12 people, several of them in their 20s.

Col Khalifa Mohammad al Khaili, head of Al Ain Police’s Traffic Department, blamed the horrific crash on reckless driving.

Meagre pay rise angers academics

ABU DHABI - AUG 19: Academics at Zayed University have dismissed a five per cent pay increase for non-Emirati staff as “a slap in the face”.

Faculty members say the increase, revealed in an e-mail to staff from the central administration office, means that pay is failing to keep pace with rising costs in the UAE, where the inflation rate last year was 11.1 per cent.

Emiratis, however, are to receive an increase of 28 per cent of basic salary, or a minimum of Dh2,000 per month.

Zayed University (ZU), which was founded in 1998 and has campuses in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sweihan, recently became the first federal institution to gain accreditation from the US Middle States Commission on Higher Accreditation.

A female ZU academic, who asked not to be named, said the pay increases for non-Emirati staff were “ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous”.

“It’s absolutely a slap in the face. These increases are after the university has been accredited. This is not good. The credit should go to the faculty,” she said.

“I think they will not be able to recruit good faculty. Faculty will leave, there’s no doubt about it. Morale has been very low.”

Six months ago, the Federal National Council was told that academics at ZU and the other federal universities, UAE University and the Higher Colleges of Technology, were leaving over pay. Now there are fears that there could be more resignations following the pay offer, which one male academic, who asked not to be named, said had left him “gutted”. The pay rise was particularly disappointing, he said, because staff had been told to expect “significant” increases.

“There’s disappointment on the campus as far as I can see and real concern.”

The e-mail sent to staff revealed that non-Emirati academics would receive a five per cent “merit” increase if their performance, as assessed this year, was adequate. While some non-academic staff would also receive five per cent rises, others would get only three per cent, again subject to a performance assessment.

In addition, all non-Emirati staff would receive a Dh400 per month basic salary increase to “offset the impact of inflation”. Pay rises are backdated to June 1. Housing costs are paid separately by the university.

Recent years have seen ongoing concerns about funding levels at the federal universities, which include UAE University and the Higher Colleges of Technology.

The issue was raised at the FNC earlier this year by Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak, the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, who said thousands of applicants were being turned down by the federal universities every year due to insufficient funding.

The FNC was also told that academics were resigning as pay rises had failed to keep up with inflation.

The funding issue for students was resolved for the 2008-09 academic year by a one-off budget increase that allowed admissions to federal universities to grow to 13,315, a 23 per cent increase on last year’s figure of 10,785.

At UAE University, staff members warned earlier this year that many academics might leave, also over the pay issue.

Sheikh Nahyan yesterday told The National that he “understood the concern” of staff members over pay. “We are looking at this issue,” he said. “Hopefully there will be a solution to this issue soon.

“We try to give staff, whether academic or other staff, appropriate and fair compensation and to take into account the inflation rate. It will be discussed with the appropriate authorities.”

Dr Sulaiman al Jassim, the university’s vice president, could not be contacted for a comment.