HRM Problems Faced by Dentists in Kuwait: A Comprehensive Analysis

This report analyzes the human resource management (HRM) challenges faced by dentists in Kuwait. It identifies critical issues such as shortages of dental specialists, inadequate training and development, high employee turnover, and burnout resulting from resource constraints and economic problems. The study highlights the impact of these issues on job satisfaction, patient care, and the overall healthcare system. The report explores specific problems like insufficient training, particularly due to COVID-19 restrictions, recruitment difficulties, and wage competition. It also examines the role of digitization and technology in dental care, including the challenges and opportunities presented by digital health technologies. The conclusion emphasizes the need for Kuwait to address these HRM issues by improving training programs, enhancing resource allocation, and fostering a supportive work environment to improve the quality of dental care and address the shortage of dentists.

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Kuwait Dentist HRM Challenges
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Introduction
In practically every area of the globe, the shortage of health workers is one of the biggest
problems. Each individual in the medical care system is important and its deficiency causes a
problem in the functioning of a system. This dearth creates an unfriendly atmosphere to keep
people in the organization. In the modern technological world, businesses require competent and
certified experts in healthcare to accomplish their objectives. Furthermore, the landscape of
human resources is continuously evolving. Dentists have recurring concerns regarding how to
deal with employee problems. In Kuwait dentists face several HR problems, such as insufficient
dental studies and acquisition of talent (Ali, 2016). There are several other problems such as
inappropriate training and development of the dentists which leads to dissatisfaction of the
healthcare experts (dentists). In this article we will discuss about these HR issues faced by
Kuwaiti Dentists and elaborate them in detail.
Kuwait Dentists HRM Issues
Training and Development
Many dentists do not have the technique of recruiting and continue to employ their employees in
completely empirical and conventional ways. Dental operations in Kuwait have still not been
spared the constantly repeated challenge of personnel turnover and very little in orthodontist
operations when the speed of labor and patient circulation is so rapid that a dentist is able to
reach his target of 100 within a week (Haron & Omar, 2012). These rapid practices of dentistry
can result into an alarming situation where the patients are not treated properly considering the
fact that the COVID-19 has further limited the experience and practical work of the dentists

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which is compulsory for becoming a certified doctor. Recruitment starts for the actual position of
the dental doctor or the orthodontic manager (Sheikh & Cheema, 2019). After the pre-selection
test (perhaps assigned to an interviewing specialist if and only when the procedure is a
component of an overall coaching activity), a selection process is carried out and a test is carried
out. The fresh recruit must be introduced cautiously and be notified of the monitoring and
implementation policies of the practice and must be respected (Howe, 2017). They should
therefore be educated, coached, motivated and maintained according to the right procedures.
However, these practices were replaced by Kuwait with Simulation labs due to COVID-19,
resulting in compromised dental training (Baskaradoss, 2021).
Figure 1: Kuwait increase of foreign doctors in year 2020 (248am.com, 2021)

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Retention, Voluntary Turnover and Wage Competition (Job Satisfaction)
In Kuwait, Kuwaiti still constitute a minority of the employment and are personnel reliant on
expatriates. The healthcare industry is one of the major areas in which foreign employees are
employed (ALOTAIBI, 2008). This is why there is a very intense salary rivalry between
international and local dentists. Several methods have been proposed to reduce employee
turnover. Irrespective of the environment, the more pleased the workers were with their work,
the more probable they were to stay.
Figure 2: Workforce shortages in GCC countries (per 10,000) (Turner, 2015)
Job satisfaction is considered to be one of the main aspects of care quality, and also low
possibilities of staff turnover for highly pleased professionals. The topic of job happiness was
widely researched in the literature because most specialists, supervisors and academics think that
its trends may impact and influence productivity, staff turnover and the retention of employees
(Bhatnagar & Srivastava, 2012). In addition, job happiness was said to be a key problem for any
company because happy workers are generally renowned for excellent performance and

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consequently. People react negatively to restricted working settings, therefore companies must
build work environments, enabling workers to think, engage and motivate people to achieve a
better quality of work life. A research conducted by Chilot (2021) indicates that the working
environment should inspire workers to do their best and demonstrate a commitment to the
company, improving the working circumstances for the purpose of the organization and thus
affecting work happiness (Mekonnen, 2021).
Figure 3: The cost of Turnover (Turner, 2015)
In Kuwait, the dentist-population ratio is 1:1577, in private sectors and in public it is recorded to
be 1:2730 (Honkala & Shyama, 2012). Government dental treatments are generally free for

KUWAIT DENTIST HR ISSUES 6
adults in Kuwait. Oral health care for individuals is mostly therapeutic and no particular
preventative treatments or reclamation systems have been developed for frequent checks. Adults'
dental appointments have been observed to consist mostly of emergency care and pain
management. However, the basic dental care is kept unnoticed or considered unimportant due to
scarcity of dentists in Kuwait (Sheikh & Cheema, 2019). Lack of dental resources and frustration
due to scarcity of dentists’ leads to Kuwaiti dentists’ unhappiness with personal progress,
frustration because of shortage of resources and unhappy participation of the faculties in strategic
thinking and high degree of ambiguity in workplace growth, and development opportunities.
Burnout due to Resource Shortages (Economic problems)
The toll of illnesses worldwide has grown almost intolerable and the spread of diseases amid
increasing populations threatens many nations' economy. Several healthcare organizations are
thus initiating different healthcare legislation projects. According to Rahman and Alkhatlan
(2018), the need for medical care in Kuwait has increased with the population still growing older
and living longer. In addition, the significant changes in the behavioral condition of the people in
the post-oil period led to sedentary living and high-calorie food consumption (M.Alkhatlan &
F.Rahman, 2018). The widespread spread of non-communicable illnesses has been encouraged
by such a lifestyle. In Kuwait, digital health technologies and systems are still restricted in their
acceptance and maturity. Appropriate information methodologies are an essential prerequisite to
strong and efficient implementation of online tools and systems in the field of health care
(Kelendar, 2020). Unfortunately, very little known about the urgent problems, gaps and
possibilities in Kuwait's healthcare organizations for informatics techniques. The socio-economic
environment of the GCC nations, particularly Kuwait, requires that these suggestions be
implemented. The oil-rich countries continue to be confronted with a variety of major economic

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challenges by constant stagnation of petroleum prices, slow economic diversifying and rising
budget deficit (Sheikh & Cheema, 2019). Computerized and health information technology
remedies are no prolonged to be leveraged to promote health policy initiatives.
Digitization due to COVID-19
Kuwait believes that digitization is the first step towards the medical care revolutions that can
help to minimize cost and enhance the dental care surgeries and implants. However, with the
digitization can result in shortage of practice and consequently expertise in the dental care
(Baskaradoss, 2021). There is frequently a lack of a cohesive control structure in collective
dental offices. This concept allows the employee to only get directions from a single online
management who is directly empowered by them. Practice direction implies that goals should be
shared to achieve one united aim by encouraging staff to work together and show a unified and
consistent face. Dentists should pass certain physical exams to recalibrate all data for the
dentistry business before obtaining final clearance from accredited and worldwide psychometric
organizations (Baskaradoss, 2021). However, this technique is restricted because to COVID-19
constraints and digitalization. In addition, there are difficulties in the digitalization of the health
sector and the use of IoT depends heavily on the important integration of data on many issues. In
Kuwait, data breaches took place in the healthcare industry that resulted in leak of patient data
(Alqattan, 2021). In order to understand data for everyone and to make educated and intelligent
choices on clinical care, healthcare practitioners must assure at all moments the success of the
implementation of these technologies. Fusion of data across a single location enables for
unimpeded sharing of this important decision-making. However, standard procedures must be
established to guarantee the interaction between various components from different groups and

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the flow of information. The issue is that IoT devices do not have standards and data
interoperability, which lead to discrepancies in the deployment of equipment (Ahmed, 2019).
Conclusion
In conclusion, we can say that Kuwait is facing multiple HR issues in the dental care
sector out of which the biggest problem is the scarcity of dental specialists (1:2730) in the
government sector. This issue of scarcity leads the dental care to lead to two other big problems;
first which is frustration due to handling of hundreds and thousands of patients and resultantly
causes the dentists to be dissatisfied with the job and employee burnout takes place. Secondly, as
discussed above in the article, the rapid process is not good for the patients and can result in
incomplete or inappropriate process of dentistry. Digitization and lack of the appropriate training
in Kuwait has led to hindrance in the talent acquisition of the students interested in dentistry.
These problems have stopped Kuwait from solving its scarcity issue of dentists in the medical
health care system and is increased due to the COVID-19 implications. Kuwait needs to solve
these issues by enhancing their training and development sector, involving appropriate schedules
to allow dentists to practice their profession in the field, and by solving the medical resource
problem (such as dental software and hardware) by making it available to the dentists. Moreover,
the high proportion of health workers from outside, even inside the healthcare profession itself,
creates communication difficulties. The interaction between some of these social characteristics
in the nation and the medical system has produced a set of contradictions that must be
acknowledged if it is to be addressed, an important step towards improving the quality of
medical and dental care in Kuwait.

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