With 50,000 nurses reportedly unemployed in Iran despite a shortage of healthcare personnel, Mohammad Sharifi Moghaddam, Secretary-General of Iran’s Nurses’ Home, stated, “Unless we fix the infrastructure, hiring is like pouring water into a sieve.”
Sharifi Moghaddam told the state-affiliated newspaper Shargh that nurses are currently emigrating, leaving their jobs, or switching to other professions.
According to this labor official, the Ministry of Health also acknowledges that new hires often leave within a month or two due to low income.
Sharifi Moghaddam also criticized healthcare management, stating, “Everyone says there’s no budget. In fact, there is a budget, but unfortunately, it’s spent elsewhere and on other groups within the healthcare system.”
Previously, Ahmad Nejatian, head of the Iranian Nursing Organization, had stated that “standards and metrics related to human resources” in the healthcare sector are very low.
In an interview with the state-run ISNA news agency, Nejatian warned that to compensate for the staffing shortage, “nurses are forced into mandatory overtime,” but “their compensation does not match the services provided and the hardship of the work.”
In August, the worsening issues facing nurses led to an extended nationwide strike, during which hundreds of nurses and medical staff in public hospitals held protests and strikes across at least 16 provinces in Iran, emphasizing their demands for fair labor and economic conditions. These actions continued into September.
