Six categories exempt from experience for licence to practice allied health professions in UAE

The Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MoHRE), in co-ordination with the Ministry of Health and Prevention and Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, has affirmed that six categories are exempt from the requirement of having 6-month experience after graduation to obtain a licence to practice professions, for all graduates from inside and outside the country.

The exempted categories include registered nurses, nursing assistants, medical laboratory technicians, laboratory technologists, respiratory care technicians and health aides.

This aims to accelerate the integration of qualified personnel into the labour market while maintaining performance quality and professional standards.

These decisions aim to comprehensively develop regulatory procedures to strike a balance between empowering academic medical expertise in the health sector and accelerating the entry of nursing and allied health profession graduates into the labour market.

This will allow for leveraging the expertise of human resources while maintaining performance quality, enhancing the integration between education and practical application and establishing governance, compliance and unified licensing standards for the ultimate end of supporting the sustainability of the healthcare workforce and strengthening the health sector’s readiness for current demands and future challenges.

The decisions followed joint co-ordination meetings among the concerned authorities and legal studies that included a review of the law on the practice of human medicine and its executive regulations, the law on the practice of some health professions for non-doctors and non-pharmacists and the cabinet resolution no. 20 for 2017 on unified standards for licensing healthcare professionals nationwide.

The study concluded that there was no legal impediment for faculty members to practise the profession, provided that they have scientific qualifications and clinical experience and that academic work is not inconsistent with professional practice.