Twice a week, nursing student Dalia Srouji takes the one-hour bus ride from Jbeil to Beirut for clinicals at Lebanese American University Medical Center – Rizk Hospital. Second-year clinicals allow students like Srouji at Lebanese American University the opportunity to assess and work with real patients and gain hands-on training and experience.
“It’s really preparing me for how it will be like once I graduate,” says Srouji.
Srouji, a Jordanian-Lebanese student who lived most of her life in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, says her parents originally told her to choose between the UAE and Lebanon for nursing school. She chose LAU for its program, a chance to be on her own away from her parents and because Lebanon is a less conservative country. Srouji, whose mom is a nurse, is a natural fit for the field.
“I grew up wanting to help people, because of how happy I’d see the people she helped were,” says Srouji. “And all her patients loved her.”
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Nurses are in high demand worldwide and lag behind in personnel in many Middle East and North African countries. The World Health Organization’s 2015 “World Health Statistics” report found that Lebanon has about 27 nursing and midwifery personnel for every 10,000 people, in comparison with 88 per 10,000 in the U.K. Egypt has about 35 per 10,000 and Algeria about 20. In the Gulf, the UAE has about 32 per 10,000; Saudi Arabia has about 49.
“We live in a world where people are becoming desensitized by things, a world where it’s hard to find someone who still genuinely cares, or is passionate about something,” says Srouji, who’s minoring in psychology. “I chose nursing to never lose touch with the empathy that I feel towards people that are in pain.”
LAU offers a three-year Bachelor of Science in nursing and has accreditation from the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, a U.S. organization that accredits bachelor’s, master’s and Doctor of Nursing degrees. The accreditation is a review by professionals in the field, signifying the quality of nursing programs.
Huda Abu-Saad Huijer, professor of nursing science and the director of the Hariri School of Nursing at the American University of Beirut, says there is definitely a demand for nurses at the BSN, Master of Nursing and doctoral levels in the Middle East and North Africa. She says grads with a BSN can work in hospitals, community agencies, health care centers, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, nongovernmental organizations, the World Health Organization, United Nations agencies and schools.
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AUB, which is accredited by the commission, offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in nursing. The school has four MSN tracks: nursing administration, adult care, psychiatry and mental health, and community and public health. Abu-Saad Huijer says MSN grads can work as clinical nurse specialists, nurse managers, quality officers, case managers, clinical instructors and human resources officers.
Palestinian national Hadeel Ayyoubi is currently pursuing her Master of Science in psychiatry and mental health nursing at AUB on a scholarship. “I chose this field because in Palestine, no specialist nurses go for mental health — only 9 percent of nurses go into this field, according to the WHO,” despite the high incidence of mental health illnesses, says Ayyoubi, who has a BSN from Birzeit University in Palestine.
Ayyoubi says with her degree she hopes to address the needs and heighten the basic human rights of those with mental illness in Palestine. She plans to return to Birzeit University to work as a lecturer and also work as a mental health nurse in local clinics or hospitals.
The MENA region offers Arab international students many opportunities for nursing education and training. Charles Docherty, chairman of the nursing department at the University of Sharjah in the UAE, and former head of the nursing school of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland – Bahrain, says compared with the West, university education in MENA is inexpensive. And Arab students have access to the same standard of education, he says, with Western universities and hospitals setting up a presence in the region.
“Massive new hospital developments such as Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi provide the same high standards as their parent institution, while newly established facilities such as the University Hospital Sharjah have become JCI accredited under a national plan for all hospitals to achieve international standards of care by 2020,” said Docherty, via email, referring to Joint Commission International, a U.S.-based organization that evaluates and accredits international health care organizations.
Nancy Hoffart, founding dean and professor at the Alice Ramez Chagoury School of Nursing at LAU, said that the university teaches “American model nursing,” combining a scientific base with technical skills. “Our nursing students spend over 1000 hours in hospitals and community health settings, learning to apply their knowledge to give effective nursing care,” said Hoffart, via email.
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Srouji says with her experience and training at LAU she plans to work as a psychiatric nurse in Lebanon before eventually pursuing her master’s in the U.S. Though nurses work 12-hour shifts in Lebanon, due to the nursing shortage, she says, at the end of the day they know they’ve touched someone’s life.
“From making someone in pain burst out laughing to watching an old woman learn how to walk again, nursing has it all,” says Srouji. “I feel like I am growing as a person with every clinical rotation.”
Her required uniform for clinicals just adds to the experience.
“With the white outfits and even white underwear, it’s like wearing a Superman costume,” says Srouji.
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Arab Region Universities Target Nurse Shortage originally appeared on usnews.com