Emirati Student Profile within Nursing Education

Background: Nursing started in the United Arab Emirates with the arrival of expatriate nurses in the later part of the nineteen century, but fifty years on though, nursing education in the country is still in its infancy, and currently only 3% of the local population are taking up the profession as a career choice in the country. Objective: Being an inaugural study in the UAE, in the Abu Dhabi Emirate, and within nursing education, the objective of this study was to create a profile of existing Emirati Nursing student characteristics, with a view of identifying specific sub-groups within the population that could later be the focus of customized recruitment and retention strategies. Design: The research design used was quantitative with an exploratory descriptive design, using a convenient sampling technique. Data for this study was collected from students studying at a College of Health sciences in the Abu Dhabi Emirate. This college is the only one currently offering baccalaureate degree Health Science related programs in Nursing, in the Emirate. Therefore, the subjects of the questionnaire data collection method included all Emirati pre-entry, undergraduate and bridging students studying in the nursing program (n=140), at the college, during the period of the study. Findings: The pre-entry, undergraduate and bridging Emirati students in the College of Health Sciences are mostly traditional, with respect to being female (100%) and being between the ages of 18 ? 24 (88.6%), but are also nontraditional in terms of some of them following a different educational pathway into the program (25%), for example an art major in high school, not studying in their native Arabic language, and being a first generation college student. Conclusions: The study findings are relevant for Emirati student recruitment and retention practices in the nursing program in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi today. This was the first study to investigate pre-entry, undergraduate and bridging Emirati student profiles in the College of Health Sciences and in the nursing program. Non-traditional students are an essential component in contributing to the growth of the profession, and support measures including recruitment campaigns need to be in place to recruit and retain this vulnerable subset of the nursing population.