Doctors · UAE & GCC
Doctors Recruitment Agency for the UAE and GCC
360Medicare is a doctors recruitment agency working across all six GCC countries — the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain — placing physicians into hospitals and clinics, and handling the licensing that sits between your current post and your first day there.
You can start the process from wherever you are practising now. Every rule and figure on this page was checked against the regulators’ own published documents in October 2026.
At a Glance
What getting licensed in the Gulf actually involves
Six countries
The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain. Each has its own regulator, its own exam rules and its own document list.
Four UAE authorities
Dubai (DHA), Abu Dhabi (DOH), Sharjah (SHA) and the remaining emirates (MOHAP). There is no single UAE-wide licence.
Four stages
Eligibility against the published requirements, primary source verification, the licensing assessment, then licence activation and visa through your employer.
Since 2019
360Medicare has supported nurses and doctors into the Gulf, with teams in the UAE, the UK, Germany and India.
How It Works
What a doctors recruitment agency actually does
A doctors recruitment agency is not a job board. Three separate things have to line up before you can start work in the Gulf, and each one depends on the others:
- An employer who needs your specialty at your grade, in a facility licensed to employ it.
- A licence from that country’s health regulator, which depends on your qualifications, your documented experience and, in most cases, an examination.
- A work visa, which the employer sponsors once the licence is in place — not before.
Most applications stall for reasons that have nothing to do with clinical ability. A certificate of good standing expires before the file is reviewed. An application is submitted for Consultant when the qualification only supports Specialist. A university does not respond to the verification agency. Our job is to get those three strands moving in the right order, and to apply for the grade your documents will actually support.
Where We Place Doctors
Doctor recruitment across the GCC
We work as a doctors recruitment agency across the whole Gulf. Pick the country you are aiming at and you will find the licensing route, the documents and the current requirements set out in full.
The largest private hospital market in the Gulf, and the most complex licensing map — four separate authorities across the emirates. Doctor recruitment for the UAE
The fastest-expanding market in the region. projects over 8,500 new hospital beds in Saudi Arabia by 2029 — 69% of all new GCC capacity. Licensing through SCFHS. Doctor recruitment for Saudi Arabia
Licensing through the Department of Healthcare Professions, formerly QCHP, which is unusual in letting you choose between three approved verification providers. Doctor recruitment for Qatar
Ministry of Health licensing. A new national licensing examination, the KMLE, takes effect on 1 January 2027 for newly qualified doctors and dentists. Doctor recruitment for Kuwait
The private-sector licence is issued by the Ministry of Health, and the assessment is an oral examination rather than a computer-based test. Doctor recruitment for Oman
Licensing through the National Health Regulatory Authority, which publishes its own professional qualification requirements for medical staff. Doctor recruitment for Bahrain
Already holding a GCC licence and thinking about moving between countries? That is its own process, and we cover it on our GCC licence transfer page. If you want the regional picture in one place, see nurse and doctor recruitment across the GCC.
UAE Licensing
The UAE has four licensing authorities, not one
This is the single most common misunderstanding we see. A licence from one emirate’s authority does not automatically let you work in another.
DHA — Dubai
Dubai Health Authority licenses through the Sheryan platform. Its current licensing manual is version 1.3, effective 18 July 2025.
DOH — Abu Dhabi
Department of Health – Abu Dhabi, applied for through TAMM. Its current licensing procedure manual was issued under Circular 151/2024.
SHA — Sharjah
Sharjah Health Authority now licenses healthcare professionals in Sharjah in its own right, with its own assessment track and its own fees.
MOHAP — the rest
The Ministry of Health and Prevention covers Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah, and holds the federal National Medical Register.
What the four authorities do share is a common standard. The Unified Healthcare Professional Qualification Requirements — the PQR — is now in its 3rd version, issued in April 2025 by a joint committee of MOHAP, DOH, DHA and SHA. It is the document that decides whether your qualification supports a General Practitioner, Specialist or Consultant title, and whether you are exempt from the licensing examination.
Partial recognition between authorities is already real and worth knowing about: under DOH Circular 151/2024, Abu Dhabi exempts from its own examination anyone holding a valid DHA or MOHAP licence for the same title in good standing — including a licence that expired or was cancelled within the previous six months. The same circular exempts UAE nationals and children of Emirati women, anyone previously DOH-licensed for the same title whose licence was cancelled within the past five years, and anyone who passed the DOH assessment for that title within the past five years.
A fully unified system has been announced but not confirmed as delivered. MOHAP launched a National Licensing Platform in February 2025, and a National Unified Digital Platform — one professional profile recognised by all four authorities, with no re-submission of documents when you move between them — was announced for the second quarter of 2026. Treat it as announced rather than live until the authorities confirm it. Full detail on each route sits on our UAE healthcare licensing page.
Which title will you get?
Your title is not a matter of what you call yourself at home. The PQR sets it, and it drives both your licence and your salary band.
- General Practitioner — a medical degree of at least five years excluding internship, a 12-month internship, and two years of clinical experience.
- Specialist — a medical degree plus a specialty qualification from the recognised certificates table. Tier 1 and Tier 2 qualifications need no post-qualification experience; Tier 3 needs three years after the main specialty qualification, or two after a sub-specialty.
- Consultant — Tier 1 qualifications need two years after the specialty qualification, Tier 2 need five. Tier 3 qualifications cannot reach Consultant at all, apart from a narrow legacy route for physicians enrolled before June 2017.
That tier system is the real mechanism behind the idea that Western board certifications give you an easier route. It is worth checking where your qualification sits before you apply for anything.
The Other Regulators
Who licenses doctors in the rest of the GCC
The Saudi Commission for Health Specialties handles registration and professional classification, and reports around 849,000 registered health practitioners. SCFHS licensing
The Department of Healthcare Professions within the Ministry of Public Health, still widely called QCHP. New rules on experience and the qualifying examination were issued in January 2026. QCHP / DHP licensing
The private-sector licence is issued by the Ministry of Health‘s Directorate General of Private Health Establishments, with an oral examination. OMSB sets training standards rather than issuing the practice licence. Oman licensing
The National Health Regulatory Authority publishes its own medical professional qualification requirements, currently version 3.1. NHRA licensing
Licensing runs through the Ministry of Health. From 1 January 2027 a unified Kuwait Medical Licensing Examination, overseen by the Kuwait Institute for Medical Specializations, applies to newly qualified doctors including expatriates. Kuwait MOH licensing
Every GCC regulator requires primary source verification of your degree, registration and experience before it will look at your file. How licensing support works
One correction worth making, because it is repeated everywhere: DataFlow is not the only verification provider in the Gulf. It is the approved provider for most authorities — DHA, DOH, MOHAP, SHA, DHCC, SCFHS, Qatar’s DHP, Bahrain’s NHRA and Oman’s OMSB all list it — but Qatar lets applicants choose between DataFlow, Quadrabay and Approved Verification Services, and verification has to be finished before the registration application is made. DHA’s own manual does not name a provider at all; it refers to a third-party agency it has delegated the work to.
On timing, be careful with the numbers you see quoted. Very few regulators publish a turnaround. The ones that do: Abu Dhabi’s DOH states that verification takes approximately 24 working days, followed by around five working days for its own review, and Sharjah’s SHA states eight working days to process a professional licence application. Any “two to six weeks” figure you find elsewhere is an agency estimate, not a published standard — and the real variable is how quickly your university and your home regulator reply.
Your Process
From first conversation to first day
Using Dubai as the worked example, because DHA publishes its process in full. The shape is similar elsewhere.
- Eligibility check. We compare your degree, specialty qualification and documented experience against the PQR for the title you want. If your documents only support Specialist, applying for Consultant wastes months.
- Documents. Degree certificates, internship certificate, specialty qualification, employment letters, passport, photograph, and a certificate of good standing from your current regulator — which must be less than six months old when it is reviewed.
- Primary source verification. The verification agency contacts your university and regulator directly. A result of “unable to verify” allows two re-verifications; a “discrepancy” result allows one.
- The assessment. DHA’s assessment may be a computer-based test, an oral examination, or both, depending on your category. You get three attempts; a third failure blocks reapplication for two years unless a fourth attempt is approved. Some professionals are exempt under the PQR — but an exemption covers the exam only, never the credentialing, experience or verification requirements.
- Registration. Once you pass, you are registered and listed on the Dubai Medical Registry. Registration is valid for one year.
- Activation by your employer. A DHA-licensed facility activates your licence through its own account and you accept it, with valid malpractice insurance in place. Activation runs for one, two or three years.
- Visa and medical fitness. Your employer sponsors the residence visa. The medical fitness certificate must be within three months.
Two rules that catch people out afterwards: six consecutive months without practising can cancel the licence, and physicians and dentists need 40 CPD points a year to renew.
Your CV
Sending your CV to a recruitment agency
Yes, you can send your CV to a doctors recruitment agency, and you should. What matters is what happens next. A CV sent to us is read against live vacancies and against the licensing requirements for the country you are targeting — those two filters are different, and a CV can pass one and fail the other.
Send it by email to info@360medicare.ae or through our enquiry form, and tell us three things in the message: your specialty and grade, the country you are aiming at, and when you could realistically start.
What a Gulf medical CV needs
- Dates with months, not just years. Verification agencies and regulators check continuity. An unexplained gap is a query that costs weeks.
- Your qualification exactly as it appears on the certificate — including the awarding body and the date awarded.
- Post-qualification experience stated separately from training. This is what decides Specialist versus Consultant.
- Your current registration, with the council or board name and your registration number.
- Procedures and caseload for procedural specialties. “Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon” says less than a line on annual arthroplasty volume.
A short, accurate CV beats a long one. Nobody has ever been rejected for leaving out a photograph or a list of hobbies.
Can an AI tool write your CV? It can structure and tighten one, and that is genuinely useful if English is not your first language. What it cannot do is know which of your qualifications the PQR recognises, or invent experience you have not documented. Use it to edit, never to generate — an AI-written CV that overstates a grade creates a discrepancy at the verification stage, and discrepancies are the single most expensive thing that can happen to an application.
Pay and Packages
What doctors actually earn in the Gulf
We would rather give you a short honest answer than a confident table built on guesswork.
The tax position — this part is certain
Doctor salaries across all six GCC countries are free of personal income tax in 2026. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain all have no personal income tax regime at all — PwC’s Worldwide Tax Summaries is the simplest place to check the current position for each country. Oman is the one exception on the horizon: under Royal Decree 56/2025, it will apply 5% to annual income above OMR 42,000 from 1 January 2028. Nothing is payable before then, and no other GCC state has enacted a personal income tax.
Two things that get conflated and should not be: the UAE’s 9% corporate tax can reach an individual running a business, but employment wages are excluded from that test, so a salaried doctor is unaffected. The 15% minimum top-up taxes introduced in the UAE and Kuwait are corporate measures aimed at large multinationals, not personal taxes.
What comes in a package
Effectively standard across the region: furnished accommodation or a housing allowance, transport, medical insurance for you and authorised dependants, 21 to 40 days of annual leave plus public holidays, return flights at the start and end of contract, and statutory end-of-service gratuity.
Genuinely negotiable, and often assumed to be included when it is not: a children’s education allowance, professional leave and CME days, and the split between basic salary and allowances.
The detail nobody mentions until it is too late
End-of-service gratuity is calculated on basic salary, not on your total package. Two offers with the same headline number can be worth very different amounts over five years. A package paid as a high basic with small allowances produces a far larger end-of-service entitlement than the same money paid as a small basic with a large housing and speciality allowance. In Saudi private practice in particular, the speciality allowance is frequently the larger half. Ask for the basic figure in writing before you compare two offers.
In the UAE, employers may also opt into a voluntary alternative to end-of-service gratuity under Cabinet Resolution 96/2023 — a funded scheme with employer contributions of 5.83% of basic wage for service up to five years, or 8.33% beyond that. It is optional for the employer; if yours has enrolled you, it replaces the traditional calculation.
Salary figures, honestly
There is no authoritative public dataset of GCC clinician pay. The major regional salary guides do not cover clinical roles — Hays’ GCC guide excludes healthcare entirely, and what the large consultancies label “healthcare and life sciences” is usually pharmaceutical and medtech industry roles rather than doctors. What is left on most websites is extrapolated from salary aggregators.
The one named-firm figure we are willing to quote: Michael Page’s 2023 UAE salary guide, as reported by The National, put a specialist at around AED 32,500 a month and a consultant at around AED 70,000. Those are three years old and the guide did not state whether they are basic or total package, so treat them as indicative only.
For Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain, no clinical pay bands are published by any government or reputable guide. We will tell you the real range for a specific role when there is a real offer attached to it, which is more useful than a table we cannot stand behind.
Choosing a Country
Which Gulf country is best for doctors?
No credible public dataset ranks GCC countries by doctor pay on a like-for-like basis, so anyone showing you a definitive league table has built it from estimates. What the evidence does support is narrower, and more useful:
- The UAE offers the highest nominal clinical salaries alongside the region’s highest cost of living. Mercer’s 2024 cost-of-living ranking placed Dubai 15th and Abu Dhabi 43rd out of 226 cities worldwide.
- Saudi Arabia pairs strong consultant packages with materially lower living costs — Riyadh 90th and Jeddah 97th in the same ranking — and it is where most of the new hospital capacity is being built.
- Kuwait, Qatar and Oman are the cheapest GCC cities to live in on that measure — Kuwait City 119th, Doha 121st, Muscat 122nd — but none of them publishes clinical pay bands, so nominal pay cannot be compared.
- From 2028, Oman will be the only GCC state applying personal income tax, which will reduce net income for higher-earning doctors there relative to its neighbours.
In practice the decision is usually settled by something other than money: which regulator recognises your qualification at the grade you want, whether your family can join you, and how long the licensing route takes. That is the conversation worth having before you pick a country.
Choosing an Agency
How to choose a doctors recruitment agency
Almost every agency website says it is the best one. A more useful test is what an agency does before you have committed to anything. Four checks worth making of any doctors recruitment agency:
- Do they handle the licence, or only the job? A vacancy is worth very little if nobody is managing the verification report, the exam booking and the regulator’s file. Those run alongside the job search, not after it.
- Will they tell you which grade your documents actually support? Applying for Consultant on a qualification that supports Specialist costs months and leaves a rejection on record. An agency that checks your qualification against the published requirements first is doing the part that matters most.
- Are they clear about what they cannot promise? No agency controls how quickly your university or home regulator replies to the verification agency, and that is the step that decides your timeline. Anyone quoting a guaranteed date is guessing.
- Is the fee structure in writing? Understand exactly what any fee covers, when it is payable, and what happens if an application is unsuccessful — before you commit.
A doctors recruitment agency that answers those four honestly will usually be slower to promise and quicker to deliver.
FAQ
Doctors recruitment in the GCC — common questions
Yes. A doctors recruitment agency reads your CV against live vacancies and against the licensing requirements of the country you are targeting. Send it with your specialty, your grade, the country you are aiming at and your realistic availability, so it can be matched properly rather than filed.
Email it to info@360medicare.ae or submit it through the enquiry form on this website. Include your specialty and grade, your current registration and registration number, your post-qualification experience stated separately from training, and the country you want to work in.
In this order: check your qualification against the Unified PQR to see which title it supports, gather your documents including a certificate of good standing less than six months old, complete primary source verification, pass the licensing assessment unless you are exempt, get registered, and then have a licensed facility activate your licence and sponsor your residence visa. The employer sponsors the visa only after the licence is in place.
There is no objective ranking, and any agency claiming to be number one is making a marketing statement rather than a measured one. Judge a doctors recruitment agency on three things instead: whether it handles the licensing as well as the job, whether it tells you which grade your documents actually support before you apply, and whether it is transparent about what it does not know.
There is no authoritative published pay scale. The most credible named-firm figure available is Michael Page’s 2023 UAE salary guide, reported by The National, which put a specialist at around AED 32,500 a month and a consultant at around AED 70,000. Those figures are three years old and do not state whether they are basic salary or total package, so treat them as indicative.
Yes, but it is an entry point rather than a target. On the available recruitment data it sits below specialist level, so it is plausible for a general practitioner, a junior clinician or a smaller private clinic role. The more useful question is which licensing route and which title move you past it.
No reliable dataset ranks them on pay like for like. The UAE has the highest nominal salaries and the highest cost of living; Saudi Arabia combines strong consultant packages with lower living costs and the most new hospital capacity; Kuwait, Qatar and Oman are cheaper to live in but publish no clinical pay bands. From January 2028 Oman will be the only GCC state with personal income tax.
In most cases yes. Dubai’s DHA assessment may be a computer-based test, an oral examination or both depending on your category. Abu Dhabi’s DOH runs its own exam with published exemptions. Oman uses an oral examination for the private-sector licence. Some professionals are exempt under the Unified PQR, but an exemption covers the examination only, never the credentialing, experience or verification requirements.
Not automatically. The UAE has four separate licensing authorities: DHA in Dubai, DOH in Abu Dhabi, SHA in Sharjah and MOHAP for Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah. There is partial recognition rather than a single licence: under DOH Circular 151/2024, Abu Dhabi exempts from its examination anyone holding a valid DHA or MOHAP licence for the same title in good standing, including one expired or cancelled within the previous six months.
Very few regulators publish a figure. Abu Dhabi’s DOH states approximately 24 working days for verification plus about five working days for its own review. Sharjah’s SHA states eight working days to process a licence application. The real variable is how quickly your university and home regulator respond to the verification agency, which is why starting verification early matters more than any published average.
No. DataFlow is listed by most GCC regulators including DHA, DOH, MOHAP, SHA, SCFHS, Qatar’s DHP, Bahrain’s NHRA and Oman’s OMSB. But Qatar lets applicants choose between DataFlow, Quadrabay and Approved Verification Services, and verification must be completed before the registration application is submitted.
It can tighten and structure a CV you have written, which is useful if English is not your first language. It cannot know which of your qualifications a GCC regulator recognises, and it should never be used to generate experience. An overstated grade on a CV becomes a discrepancy at the verification stage, which is the most expensive problem an application can develop.
Yes, in 2026. None of the six GCC states levies personal income tax on employment income. Oman will apply 5% to annual income above OMR 42,000 from 1 January 2028 under Royal Decree 56/2025. The UAE’s 9% corporate tax excludes employment wages, so it does not affect salaried doctors.
Next Step
Tell us your specialty and where you want to work
Send your CV and we will come back with the grade your documents support, the regulator that fits your qualification, and what the licensing route realistically looks like from where you are now. If you would rather look at live roles first, our current vacancies are open to applications.
Hiring rather than applying? See how we work with employers.