CHALLENGES EXPERIENCED BY FILIPINO NURSES WORKING IN OSPITAL IN QATAR

Being a hospital nurse is a challenging job that covers a wide scope of practice to promote health and disease prevention and cater to patient needs throughout the stage of confinement in the hospital. Hospital nurses worked in multidisciplinary settings wherein they assisted each member of the healthcare team. This qualitative study seeks to look at the lived experience of hospital nurses working in Qatar, to bring us into deeper understanding of their situation and the challenges they were facing working abroad and away from their families, the same as the adaptive strategies they were practicing to winning over the stress and struggles they experienced. By utilizing the phenomenological approach, an in-depth question guide was made and distributed to the hospital nurses working in Qatar to collect comprehensive data that support the study. The data were examined and evaluated using thematic analysis to reveal repeated themes and patterns. The result of this study gave important insight into the subjective challenging experience of hospital nurses in Qatar. It unraveled the emotional, physical, and mental aspects of their work, including striving, adjusting, and winning all the challenges related to working abroad. The study also explored how OFW hospital nurses in Qatar advanced their knowledge with continuous innovation in healthcare and to what extent they were able to manage their professional growth. Understanding the challenges of Filipino hospital nurses in Qatar could implore more studies on ways how to cope with the specific challenges that are limited to their experience. In addition, the result of the study could pave the way for preparing aspiring nurses who want to work in Qatar as hospital nurses, they were allowed to overview the working conditions of their fellows in Qatar. Finally, this study aimed to intensify our understanding of the situation and challenges of the hospital-based nurses in Qatar and contribute to the holistic improvement of OFW nurses working all over the world.