Dubai's healthcare register lists 31,900 professionals, with 20,501 on full-time licences

Dubai's public healthcare professional licensing register lists 31,900 healthcare professionals, and 20,501 of them hold a full-time licence (FTL). That is according to this edition of the Zavis Dubai Licensed Workforce Monitor. The rest of the register is mostly professionals recorded as Registered (REG), a group of 11,340 people.

The shape of this workforce matters to the people who hire, pay for and use care. Operators compete for the same pool of licensed staff. Insurers build networks on top of it. Patients depend on it for access. Zavis analysis shows the pool leans heavily towards general practice and dentistry. A small group of large facilities also holds a sizeable share of full-time licences, while hundreds of sites run on a single full-time licensed professional.

Most of the register holds a full-time licence

Zavis analysis of the register, as indexed in the UAE Open Healthcare Directory, finds that 64.3% of listed professionals hold a full-time licence (FTL). Registered (REG) is the second-largest category at 35.5%. The register records licence types exactly as shown below. Zavis does not interpret their legal status, and REG should not be read as a lapsed or inactive licence.

The other categories are small. The register records 36 professionals with a part-time licence (PTL) and 22 with a training licence (TRL). One entry is recorded under the label "Permanent License".

The register covers Dubai only. Other emirates license their healthcare professionals separately, so these figures do not describe the UAE as a whole.

General practice and dentistry dominate the specialty mix

The register records 194 distinct specialties. Even so, a handful of them account for much of the workforce. General Practitioner is the largest specialty in the Zavis analysis, with 6,922 professionals, of whom 4,356 hold full-time licences. General practice makes up 24.6% of all full-time licences in the register.

General Dentist is second, with 5,103 professionals and 3,042 full-time licences. Obstetrics And Gynecology comes third, with 1,501 professionals and 1,008 full-time licences. Pediatrics, Family Medicine, Dermatology and Anesthesia follow, each with more than a thousand professionals listed.

The ratio of full-time licences to listed professionals varies by specialty. Medical Resident stands out: 621 of its 664 listed professionals hold full-time licences. In most other large specialties a much smaller share of listed professionals hold full-time licences.

Elective and outpatient specialties feature strongly further down the list. Dermatology, Orthodontics, Ophthalmology, Otolaryngology and Plastic Surgery each appear among the largest specialties by headcount.

Large facilities hold a quarter of full-time licences

Zavis analysis finds 2,583 facilities with at least one listed professional. Full-time licences are unevenly spread across them. The twenty largest facilities by full-time headcount hold 25.4% of all full-time licences in the register.

Graduate Medical Education- Dubai Health has the most full-time licensed professionals of any facility, with 708 across 14 specialties. Its narrow specialty spread fits with the large Medical Resident group in the register. Rashid Hospital - Dubai Health is second with 496 full-time professionals, and Dubai Hospital - Dubai Health is third with 333.

Private hospitals make up the rest of the facilities in the table. Saudi German Hospital and American Hospital Dubai each have 285 and 284 full-time professionals. American Hospital Dubai records 63 specialties, the widest range among the facilities shown. Mediclinic City Hospital follows closely with 62.

At the other end of the scale, the register lists 642 facilities with exactly one full-time licensed professional. Dubai's workforce therefore sits in two very different settings: large hospital systems with hundreds of full-time staff, and many small sites that rely on one person.

What it means

For operators, general practice and general dentistry are the deepest talent pools in the register. Specialties lower down the list are thinner and may be harder to recruit for. The 642 single-professional facilities face a particular continuity risk: when one person is on leave, the site may have nobody full-time on its licence.

For insurers, a sizeable share of full-time licences sits with a small number of large facilities. Network terms with these sites therefore cover a meaningful part of Dubai's licensed workforce. The long tail of small facilities calls for a different approach to network management.

For patients, the register shows wide access to general practitioners and dentists. For a specialist visit, check that the facility lists the relevant specialty and confirm the professional's availability before booking. This matters most at smaller sites, where a single professional may cover the whole service.