KUWAIT: Kuwait Nursing Association's (KNA) Chairman Bandar Nashmi Al-Enezi urged the Cabinet to pass a special payroll cadre for nurses, which was already approved by the Civil Services Commission (CSC) three years ago. He also stressed that nurses in Kuwait had the worst salaries in all GCC states. "Approving the new payroll system will help encourage more Kuwaitis to join nursing, because there is already a paucity of 1,600 nurses from the entire nursing community of 24,000 from various nationalities," he explained, noting that the nursing field needs around 22,000 Kuwaitis to cover the shortage. Enezi said the profession annually needs 300 new nurses, who unlike other professions, can be directly recruited by CSC after graduation. He also noted that some Kuwaiti nurses have already completed postgraduate studies and specialized in certain areas such as pediatrics, maternity and surgical nursing.

By A Saleh