Doctors, nurses sought for Persian Gulf hospital

CLEVELAND (AP) — The Cleveland Clinic is seeking to lure doctors and nurses to its new hospital in the Persian Gulf region with incentive packages that include high-end salaries and paid private education for employees’ children.

A 360-bed specialty hospital in Abu Dhabi, the largest of the city-states that make up the United Arab Emirates, is expected to open in 2012 as the Clinic’s first overseas outpost.

The hospital and an adjacent clinic are under construction on Sowwah Island. It will offer some of the same services as the Cleveland center, including heart and vascular care.

That means the Clinic needs to hire hundreds of doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals — more than 700 nurses alone in the midst of a nationwide nursing shortage.