DOH Remediation Courses for Healthcare Professionals in Abu Dhabi

The DOH is the health regulator for Abu Dhabi city, Al Ain and Al Dhafra, set up under Abu Dhabi Law No. 10 of 2018. Professionals apply and renew through the TAMM government platform under the DOH Licensing Procedural Manual (LPM-01), and a licence lasts two years. Cases about individual practice tend to start in one of four ways.

Two practical points. DOH circular 63/2021 asks facilities and professionals to keep their mobile numbers and email addresses up to date so that DOH letters reach them; a message sent to an old address can still start a deadline. And the investigation service page carries a separate user guide and FAQs for healthcare professionals, which is worth reading before you write anything.

Members are experienced doctors appointed by the head of the health authority. The committee may call on other specialties or set up technical sub-committees, but only members vote. Its remit is broad and exclusive: whether there was an error, how serious it was, who contributed and by how much, what caused the harm, and any percentage of disability. A claim for compensation will not be heard in court until the committee has looked at it.

The committee's rapporteur asks for the original medical file and may call both sides and witnesses. A clear note of the consent discussion, your reasoning and the follow-up is often what makes an Article 17 answer possible. A reasoned report is due 30 days after referral, but the period can be extended. Until it is issued the complainant can change, add to or withdraw the complaint; the DOH's own powers to inspect and penalise carry on regardless.

Both sides can use the DOH service Appeal request for medical error complaint. The essentials:

• Time limit: 30 days from receipt of the committee report.
• Cost: AED 5,000, payable through an SMS link that the Ministry of Health and Prevention sends to the number on the request.
• Content: a detailed request that sets out, point by point, what you dispute.
• Decision-maker: the Higher Medical Liability Committee at MOHAP. Federal legislation calls the same body the Supreme Committee of Medical Liability.
• Timing and outcome: there is no fixed time frame, and the decision is emailed to the address you registered.

Miss the window and the first report becomes final under Article 20 of the Decree-Law. The appeal committee, made up of medical consultants, can confirm, change or cancel the report. A change can work against you as well as for you, so take advice from your insurer or lawyer before filing. The legislation describes the appeal decision as final; a UAE lawyer can tell you whether anything further is open in your case.

The appeals that justify the fee answer the committee's reasons directly. Identify the paragraph you disagree with, the guideline or published evidence that supports you, and any material in the record that was overlooked. A report from another expert in the field, arranged through your insurer or lawyer, can strengthen the request. Telling the same story again rarely moves a committee.

Administrative action does not wait for the liability process to finish. A penalty on a DOH licensee may be based on Abu Dhabi law or on a federal profession law, and the time you have to challenge it changes with the basis.

Under both federal laws you must be given a chance to answer before any penalty, though failing to turn up without good reason will not hold up a decision. A 2026 DOH announcement also cited articles of the disciplinary regulations for the Abu Dhabi health sector without naming the instrument in full. If you receive a decision, ask the DOH to confirm the exact provision, and if in doubt act within 15 days.

• Pending a report. Federal Decree-Law No. 4 of 2016, Article 23, lets the health authority suspend a licence in renewable blocks of up to 30 days while a report is awaited or other breaches are examined. It is a safety measure, not a verdict.
• No renewal while suspended. The DOH Licensing Procedural Manual does not allow a suspended professional to apply for renewal. A licence that has been expired or cancelled for more than five years needs a fresh registration.
• Protection for clinical judgement only. Article 24 stops investigation, arrest or detention for a medical error until there is a final report of gross error. Fraud, falsified documents and tampered records are outside that protection.
• Fraud is treated differently. In March 2026 the DOH suspended every staff member involved in selling sick leave without examination and altering records, and referred the matter to the Public Prosecution.

If you are suspended, keep your CPD portfolio moving and keep a note of every date, so that you know what renewal will require when the suspension ends.

The DOH publishes some of its enforcement action. Three announcements show how individual professionals can be drawn in.

Read together, these cases suggest that the most serious consequences came from dishonest or careless paperwork rather than from clinical misjudgement on its own. They also show that "the clinic told me to" did not protect the person whose name was on the record or the claim.

Abu Dhabi has no single DOH code of ethics. Professional conduct is judged against federal law, MOHAP's national Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct of 2017, the national Healthcare Workforce Bioethics Guidelines of August 2024 and a group of DOH documents. The ones that most often matter in an individual case:

Before you write anything, look at your own practice through the documents a DOH reviewer is likely to hold up against it. A private self-audit shows where the gaps are while there is still time to act, and once you act it becomes evidence of change.

Look, note what you find and change what needs changing from now on; never alter past entries. Agree the sample with your adviser, keep the audit apart from the case file, and repeat it a few months later so you can show the change has held.

CME in Abu Dhabi is counted over the two-year licence. Physicians and dentists need 80 credits per cycle; nurses, midwives and pharmacists 40; allied health and traditional and complementary medicine professionals 20. The DOH Standard for Continuing Professional Development (2024) requires at least half of each cycle to be formal activity as the Standard defines it, counts one hour as one credit, expects you to keep a portfolio that can be audited, and asks for learning in every year of practice rather than a rush before renewal.

After three months on an active DOH licence you can ask for a good standing certificate. It records any suspension, revocation, investigation or warning, past or current. Other authorities ask for a certificate under six months old, so a DOH case will be visible if you apply in Dubai, Sharjah or the Northern Emirates.

Your licensing authority decides how any learning counts towards your CPD or a requirement it has set. If nothing has been ordered, our courses can sit in your portfolio as self-directed learning with a written reflection, and each certificate shows the title, CPD hours and date of completion.

1. Start with the dates. Note when the notice arrived. An appeal against a committee report allows 30 days; a grievance against a penalty allows 15 or 60, depending on the law cited.
2. Make sure the incident was logged. An event that never reached the facility's incident system is much harder to explain later. The DOH standard on incidents says reporting should lead to disciplinary action only in the most exceptional cases.
3. Bring in the insurer and management. The facility owner has to insure its practitioners against medical error claims and pay for the cover (Federal Decree-Law No. 4 of 2016, Article 26). Find out how a claim is notified and whether the policy pays for legal or expert help.
4. Leave the notes alone. Use the facility's formal correction process for any change. Electronic systems keep a trail, and the DOH has suspended people for altering records.
5. Talk to the patient through the facility. Use the disclosure process your facility has in place rather than calling the patient privately.
6. Look at who is on the committee. A member with a family link to a party, a reporting line to a party, a treating role for the same condition or a role advising you must stand aside (Cabinet Resolution No. 40 of 2019, Article 12).
7. Write with advice. Lay out the facts, then your reasoning and the guidance you relied on, then what you have changed since.

The following is an illustrative scenario, not a real case. A nurse on a medical ward in an Abu Dhabi hospital gives a scheduled antibiotic several hours late during a busy shift. The patient deteriorates, then recovers. No incident is logged. Two months later the patient uses the DOH Investigation Request for Medical Error service.

• First moves. She notes the date of the DOH letter, tells her line manager and asks how the hospital's insurer is notified.
• The record. Her notes show when the dose was given but not why it was late. She leaves them untouched and writes a dated, private account of the shift for her adviser.
• The missing incident report. She raises it with the quality team, who decide how it should be recorded now. Nothing is backdated.
• Contact with the patient. It goes through the hospital's disclosure process, not a personal call.
• Learning and change. She completes Open Disclosure and Preventing Recurrence After an Error or Incident, reflects in writing on why the event went unreported, and agrees a handover prompt for time-critical doses with her charge nurse.
• Her reply sets out the timeline from the record, accepts plainly that the event should have been logged, and attaches the certificates, the reflection and the new prompt, each dated.

None of this settles the result. It does give the committee and the DOH a clear view of what happened, what she understands now and what has changed, which is what they need to judge the risk of a repeat.

There is no published DOH scheme for outside remediation courses. If a decision imposes conditions, meet them exactly and keep evidence of each one. Federal regulations give a sense of what a route back can involve. Nurses, midwives and allied professionals whose licence is reissued after revocation may be required to complete training on what went wrong, be reassessed, accept a narrower scope or work under supervision for a time (Cabinet Resolution No. 176 of 2025, Article 11). Physicians coming back from a suspension of three to twelve months can have their competence re-evaluated or their privileges limited (Cabinet Resolution No. 67 of 2020, Article 7.2).

When nothing has been ordered, well-chosen learning still helps your response and your return. The elements that carry weight:

• a course that fits the concern, completed and certificated;
• a reflection that connects the learning to the event and to how you work now;
• proof of change, such as an audit of your own consent records or prescribing, or a new template;
• comments from a supervisor or medical director gathered over several months.

Our remediation courses page sets out how to assemble this into a single file.

DOH cases tend to turn on three things: the liability test, the quality of the record and how openly the event was handled afterwards. This set covers all three, together with the process and the reflection committees look for. Add the ethics course for your profession, for example Medical Ethics for Doctors in the UAE or Ethics and Professional Conduct for Dentists, and one topic course from the concerns table.

All courses are online and self-paced, with UAE case studies and knowledge checks, a 20-question scenario-based final assessment (30 questions in the 4-hour core investigation course) with an 80% pass mark and a reflective account to keep in your portfolio. To see how Abu Dhabi compares with Dubai and the federal system, read the UAE complaints guide.