The state-run Hame-Mihan newspaper has addressed the problems of the healthcare workforce in Iran, examining issues such as resignations, job changes, and nurses leaving their positions. It indicates that in recent months, aside from suicides, a group of nurses in various hospitals across the country have collectively resigned.
On April 29, Hame-Mihan, had interviews with protesting nurses and reported that groups of nurses from Shohadaye Tajrish Hospital, Taleghani Hospital in Chalus, Taleghani Hospital in Abadan, and nurses from several healthcare centers in Yazd have made headlines with their mass resignations in recent months.
In recent years, nurses have been grappling with numerous issues, laying the groundwork for ongoing protests. Hame-Mihan notes that “collective resignations” have been added to the range of protest actions by nurses.
In the latest development, a group of 43 nurses from the operating room and anesthesia department of Shohadaye Tajrish Hospital resigned.
In their protest resignation letters, these nurses stated that “failure to address repeated follow-ups regarding demands such as low overtime rates, wages and performance reward, non-payment of approved tariff, radiation fee, clothing right, and approved housing right by the Ministry of Labor” are part of the reasons for their resignation.
Ham-Mihan reports that among the factors contributing to nurses’ protests and the prevalence of mass resignations are heavy work shifts, manpower shortages, lack of respect in the workplace, performing unrelated tasks beyond the scope of their duties such as pharmacy-related tasks, secretary duties, and caregiver duties.
The Deputy Nursing Department of the Ministry of Health has confirmed reports of nurses quitting their jobs.
Ham-Mihan reports that in addition to physicians’ inclination towards working in the beauty sector, nurses also prefer to leave hospital jobs and engage in other professions such as working in beauty clinics and hair transplantation.
According to the newspaper, quitting is not only among “young nurses” in healthcare centers but has also extended to “more experienced personnel” who prefer to resign despite their extensive work experience.
The collapse of the healthcare system is occurring while health ministry officials have so far shown no reaction to the increasing cases of nurses’ resignations.
Mohammad Sharifi Moghadam, the secretary-general of the “Nurse House,” told Ham-Mihan that when you talk to any hospital in the current situation, they tell you that some nurses have left or a group is preparing to migrate.
Sharifi Moghadam has announced the “15% quitting rate of nurses” and considered it “alarming.”
Regarding the cases of quitting, he said, “Quitting has always existed, but in the past three to four years, it has accelerated. Recent symbolic and protest resignations are new and are for demonstrating nurses’ collective protests. A nurse says, now that I want to leave, others should be aware too.”
Alongside resignations, the issue of migration among nurses is also hotly debated and has gained momentum in recent months. In this regard, on March 4, with the crisis of migration intensifying, the head of the National Nursing Organization announced the minimum migration rate of nurses per year to be 2,700 and said that the “Nurse Retention Package” is being developed.
Mohammad Taghi Jahanpour had claimed that this action was ordered by the regime’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
Some analysts see these events as indicative of the depth of the disaster and the looming major crisis in this sector; a crisis that, from their perspective, even the regime’s supreme leader is apprehensive about its social and political consequences.
This crisis manifests itself at a time when, according to Mohammad Mirzabeigi, the head of the Nursing Organization on December 25, 2023, more than 10,000 of Iran’s “finest nurses” have “quit their jobs and migrated” from the country.
Nurses and healthcare workers in Iran have repeatedly protested their job conditions and problems in various cities of Iran over the past years and months.
