I hesitated to post on this topic, since people should make up their own opinion and for many people, the best way to learn the value of a great employer is to work for a substandard employer. But, the reality is, that unless you are desperate for money or need to escape the USA, you should not have to experience this organization.
National Ambulance in the UAE is not a company that is on the forefront of EMS, in reality it is an organization run by personnel with little to no experience in healthcare, EMS operations, or air medical, who are operating well above their level of competence and openly ignoring their expert Medical Director who has vast experience in both emergency medicine and air medical as both a field and in hospital provider. The “HEMS” Director isn’t even an advanced medic and has little of no field experience!
Currently National Ambulance is on track to assume control of all EMS in the UAE, except Dubai Emirate. Sadly, the executive level management, with the exception of the Medical Director (who they generally ignore) have utterly no experience in healthcare or EMS, worse; they all seem to have a management philosophy that is better suited to the financial services industry than healthcare. The human resources department is simply incompetent, with a manager in charge who has no understanding of the industry and takes offense at the smallest remark.
There is definitely a London Ambulance Service focus to the organization, unfortunately LAS is quite possibly the worst EMS service in the developed world. While the organization pays lip service to wanting a “Seattle” system, they are absolutely 180 degrees from making that happen.
This organization has fundamental flaws that will eventually lead to its downfall, creating an opportunity for another “connected” group to take over the EMS system in the UAE.
While there was apparently a time where the management was pro employee that has ended! The organization decided to increase the workload of every employee a short time ago, resulting in dramatic increases in work hours. For many people that hour increase resulted in multiple “unpaid” shifts per month required for all personnel, even those who already worked a four on four off schedule.
The executive level managers seem to believe that they have done you a favor by giving you a job at National Ambulance, and tend to react poorly when an employee proposes that it is not really any better than a job in the USA with the same amount of overtime (reflected as unpaid required time here) and CME attendance requirements. The CEO seems particularly reactive to any negative comment and is operating far outside his capability as an “EMS Executive Officer”.
The middle management has developed a significant reactive personality and tends to be rather unpleasant to deal with in general; additionally, many are pushing an LAS mindset forward in all areas of the organization.
The pay is not high, if you live frugally; your monthly costs will be approximately $1500-1600 a month. That will leave you $4500-$5000 per month to put in savings or send home to your family. The organization provides housing (some single accommodations and many contracts where you will have roommates) and health insurance (which is substandard and changes providers frequently).
While the UAE is certainly among the best places to live in the Arabic world, it is still an Islamic country with extremely conservative values and a significant amount of classism, racism, and repression.
The Medical Director seems genuinely interested in creating a better EMS system and saving the lives of UAE citizens, unfortunately, he is frequently overruled on clinical decisions by the CEO and other executives, which is simply unbelievable that they have the arrogance to overrule the physician in charge, especially since they have no medical background at all beyond some supposed military training in their past.
The education department is primarily staffed by educators who are far beyond their level of competence to be teaching even ACLS. Both the operations management and many educators make frequent racist and depreciating comments about the Philippine Nurse/EMT staff and the Jordanian EMT’s; most of the time focused on their intelligence.
There have been some changes to the education department over the last year and a half; they brought in an Education Manager, who seems like a nice guy and interested in quality education, they brought in a couple of Irish educators who are very good and care about the quality of the courses they teach. In addition, the medical director brought over the AMR guy who invented the RAT Team and was one of the original advanced practice/remote ALS/rescue/aeromedical people in the USA; at AMR they supposedly called him the “hanging judge” when he was one of the executives in Clinical Services and Special Operations there because he was beyond reproach and quite the boy scout. He was responsible for raising standards and getting rid of bad medics throughout the organization – or so the story I heard goes. But shortly after he got here, they hobbled him to the point that it is embarrassing to even watch, he and the medical director flunked all the “HEMS medics” and advanced practice personnel when he did a pretty basic advanced practice course for them back in October. That made the British fly into a rage when they were uncovered as incompetent. But the executives kept every one of those people in their positions, they did not even do reassignment and get better people! Since that, they have moved him to a corner and just make him sit at a computer and do paperwork; it is pretty embarrassing for one of the founders of EMS rescue to be seen just being a clerk in a corner. What’s worse is he still thinks it is going to change! He is still dedicated to the Medical Director and the Medical Director’s vision, but really, how long can that last, the guy has to stop allowing them to step all over him eventually? No way is he here by the end of summer; they don’t even let him out in the field to show people how it is done, he goes back to the USA to work and run calls on his own dime! At AMR he supposedly made all the clinical educators run calls and he would just go jump on trucks or aircraft at incidents all the time – really sad to watch.
So right now…the Education Manager is having all employees prove competency through a scenario course they are putting on, it is actually a good idea, but in reality, it is hilarious because of the educators they have doing it. The three qualified educators aren’t the ones doing the testing (probably because of the British management?) instead the ones they have doing it can’t even give a hard scenario and half the time they don’t even know if the advanced medics are doing it right – they actually had to go ask if something one of the advanced medics did was right the other day! Pretty sad for a basically great idea, just another drive to the bottom, because they are afraid to get rid of anyone who is incompetent, or even take them off duty!
If you want to just do nothing and make some cash, take a job at National Ambulance. But if you have standards, you might want to pass…..
