Up to 60 health professionals are wanted in Abu Dhabi to work at the American owned Cleveland Clinic.
The Americans have taken on an international recruitment company which is to present the opportunities and answer questions from interested parties. Recruiters will be at the University of the Algarve in Faro on the 25th of February between 13.00 and 18.00.
The American health group management explained that it wants to recruit from Portugal "in recognition of the excellence of the training in Portugal, as well as the quality of people working in healthcare, including emergency travel nurses and support staff."
The Cleveland Clinic, founded in 1921, is an organisation that runs hospitals and also engages in research and education in healthcare.
According to a spokesman, after this first phase of recruitment for the Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi which takes in Faro, Coimbra, Lisbon and Oporto, candidates will undertake a second phase consisting of telephone or face to face interviews.
During April, the third stage of the selection process will be held in Lisbon with face to face interviews with each candidate and with the management of the Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi.
Portugal’s nursing staff have already been praised in the UK as being more sympathetic than British nurses and nurses from other countries. Their quality training coupled with language skills enables them to leave the health sector in Portugal with its funding constraints, low wages and - in the Algarve – poor overall management, to seek highly paid jobs overseas.
Portugal has lost 240,000 people to emigration in the past two years, many of them medical staff who can earn several times their equivalent Portuguese salary by working in more developed economies.
In 2012 alone, 8,693 locally trained nurses left Portugal for better jobs elsewhere. Add to this the number of doctors and skilled support staff that have left and the Portuguese health service can now be viewed as a training factory for emigrants, with the sector management having to spend yet more money on recruiting staff from overseas locations such as Latin America.