The Ministry of Health informed several candidates for the College of Nursing elections on 20 June 2015 that they were disqualified from standing. They were informed by letters and phone calls shortly before the deadline for declaring their candidacy, leaving them only one day to appeal the decision. No justification was given however. The House of Nurses association believed it was a result of a year of protests by nurses over inadequate pay and benefits.
Two months later four hospital nurses at Tehran’s Amir Alam Hospital were dismissed for taking part in labour protests. The termination order was issued by the Tehran Medical Sciences Board of Administrative Offences. Two of the fired nurses were members of Tehran’s Nursing Association. Nurses had been demanding the implementation of the Nursing Tariff Act, which had been approved eight years earlier but had not been implemented due to the lack of an adequate budget.
