Professional Connections' Testimonials

Information on Saudi-Arabia and KAMC hospital

Letter from Tommi

Travelled to KAMC Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in April 2008 through Profco

Getting ready for the trip

You should take with you short socks, underwear, light clothes (for women it doesn’t matter what you wear under the abbaya), sneakers for work (preferably white, but some people have Crocs and other shoes, there is lots of walking), sandals, flip-flops, camera, laptop (but you can cheap computer here also), sportswear. Women need to have a one-piece swimsuit at the compound pool, but on the private beach they can wear bikinis. Men need to have long swimming shorts that go down to the knees.

On the compound everyone can wear for example shorts or skirts that are down to your knees and a t-shirt. You can’t wear a sleeveless shirt. Outside the compound men should wear long pants and a t-shirt. Women need to wear the abbaya outside the compound and keep a scarf with them in case someone asks them to cover their hair.

In the apartment there are 2 bath towels, 2 small towels and two sets of sheets.

Hint for women: You should bring tampons and cotton underwear if you want from your hone country, as they are hard to find here.

Air Cargo for luggage over 20 kg

Remember that if your luggage is over 20 kg, you need to send the rest by Air Cargo. KAMC hospital pays the Air Cargo for up to 20 kg (but they don’t pay the airport taxes naturally). I had almost 20 kg in the Air Cargo. I paid about 191 € for it and got back about 167€. You need to bring the bags to the Air Cargo at least a day before your own flight. Don’t put anything in the cargo bag you might need within a week.

The hospital will assist you in retrieving the air cargo bags. The Customs will inspect your bag thoroughly; so don’t put any material that might offend their religion, like CDs, books, movies, and pictures. Be prepared for a customs payment, which was 20 SAR.

Arriving to Saudi Arabia and the apartment

On the Jeddah airport, there was someone to meet me from the hospital’s Meet & Greet department. He will help you through the airport and bring you to the driver who will drive you to the hospital compound.

The personnel of the hospital live on two separate areas. The other is very close to the hospital and the other about 50 minutes away by car. Walls surround the hospital compound and guards are at the gate 24/7.

Most of the houses look the same. Our building has 6 rooms, kitchen, balcony, toilet and a separate bathroom. There are three people living here. There are also smaller apartments. The kitchen has a dishwasher, laundry machine, dryer, big fridge/freezer and an oven. My room has air-conditioning, 160cm wide bed, 2 nightstands, lot of closet space, table, 2 chairs, shelf and a mirror. The room and the apartment are a nice size.

It’s possible to get Internet to the apartment, which is really slow because the whole building uses the same line. But they are planning on getting a faster Internet connection on the compound. A wireless option is good, which we got from company called Mobily. The connection worked right away. It costs about 170-200€. Next monthly payments will depend on the speed of the connection. I took the unlimited version and it costs 60€ a month. A basic connection is 35€ a month.

Local cell phone subscription I got from the Mobily also. It’s prepaid and it costs 75 SAR. Local text messages cost about 0,25 SAR per message. A short call is cheaper than a message. To Finland a text message is 0,5 SAR.

From my apartment it’s about 800m to the hospital, 90m to the fire station, 40m to the bus station, 100m to the grocery store, 70m to a restaurant, coffee shop, jewelry store, game room, where they have a Playstation, pool table an a ping pong table. 40m to the tennis courts, 40m to the minifootball court, 120m to the pool (50meters), 100m to the big gym. So all the services are near. On the compound the women, men and families are on the same area. We live in the same houses too.

Jeddah is more open-minded than Riyadh. Here for example a man and a woman can go by themselves with a taxi to eat in a local restaurant and walk on the streets and nobody looks at you badly. Women don’t need to cover their hair anywhere, unless you’re really unlucky and somebody demands it. That’s why it’s good to have a scarf with you always.

The hospital

King Abdulaziz Medical City – Jeddah (KAMC-J) or King Khalid National Guard Hospital (KKNGH), or National Guard Hospital are all names you can use from the hospital.

It is mainly a private hospital taking care of the National Guard and their families. We take care of an area of about 11 000 people. Because we are a private hospital the visitors are not patients, but customers. The hospital was opened 14.9.1982. It has 350 beds. There are about 3600 to 4500 patients a month in the emergency ward. There are about 900 nurses in the hospital.

Moving around in Jeddah

Bus transport between the hospital and the apartments goes every 20 minutes. But by foot you will get there faster or in the same time. In the morning it is still cool ( 25C) for now, so it’s nice to walk to work. In the middle of the day it is already 40C.

The hospital arranges busses to the city every morning and night. It’s easier to use the hospital’s own “taxi service”. With a car you can get downtown much faster and you can get back when you want. One-way it is 25-50SAR which is under 5-10€ per car. If there are many people going at the same time, the prize is not a lot at all.

Orientation

On the first day you need to fill all kinds of papers, you get your ID card, your uniform and you get a personal code for the phones, with which they charge all your land line phone calls. In the afternoon you meet the nurse managers and open a bank account, where your salary will be paid. Getting an ATM card takes about 10 days. There are two ATM machines in the hospital and one at the compound gate.

On the second day the actual 4-day orientation begins. It includes visions, quality, drug calculations (the test is easy and you practice a lot for it), the rights of the patient and their family, measuring blood sugar, examining the patient, managing the pain, moving the patient ergonomically, training of nurses in Saudi, medications, pharmacy, using the medical library, infection control, wound care and so on. You will have some vaccinations, new blood tests, tuberculosis test and they check your height and weight.

The next week includes learning Arabic language and culture. You learn some numbers, and useful words, lost of interesting things about the culture.

Other useful information

If you join the Social Club that has an office next to the compound gym, you get some discounts from different places, you can freely use the gym, pool, tennis courts etc. The Club arranges trips and events. It costs about 25 SAR/month, which is about 4,3€.

Here the weekend is on Thursday and Friday. Their calendar Hijri, is different from our Gregorian calendar. They live in the year 1429 here. The hospital uses the Gregorian calendar also.

You can hear the prayers from the towers five times a day. The closest mosque is 30m from our building. Luckily it’s on the other side. But it doesn’t bother you. And the speakers are not so loud because there are family apartments near.

The cost of life is much less here. I bought 4 bags of groceries and it cost less than 40€.

In one day the food costs are about 4€ altogether (breakfast, lunch and dinner). Depending on what you eat at night. But you can’t spend 10 € in one day at least on the compound. The hospital’s basic lunch is 10 SAR= 1,7€. Juice/soda/water is 0,17€/each. It is usually fish, chicken or vegetarian food. Rice, potatoes, pasta, vegetables, deserts and fruits. You won’t be hungry here. If you go to a nice restaurant it costs more, depending on what you take, about 7-17€.

All necessary things are in order in about three weeks, like permanent Iqama, Internet connection and the ATM card.

You will hear a lot of “go with the flow”, and it’s a good advice. Things are not like in Finland, but you can deal with it with the right attitude.

Contact profco to get you here

Greetings,

Tommi

SN-1

Emergency & accident department