Nurses lift action

The Malta Union of Midwife and Nurses (MUMN) yesterday lifted industrial action after an agreement was reached with the Health Department over problems associated with overcrowding in St Luke's Hospital wards.

The nurses had been refusing to administer intravenous medication, a task taken over by doctors, who had protested and were threatening to take their own action.

The MUMN announced it was suspending action yesterday morning after the Health Director General had called the union for an afternoon meeting. The union then decided to lift action definitively after an agreement was reached during the meeting.

"The meeting mainly focused on overcrowding in the wards," MUMN president Rudolph Cini told The Times.

"We agreed on a nurse-patient ratio of one to six in general wards. In the world, only in the state of California has such an achievement been reached. In this respect, therefore, Malta is ahead of other European Union countries where there were attempts to reach such an agreement."

The agreement covers a concession on working hours. All nurses are now allowed to work 46 and two-thirds hours per week, instead of being restricted to 40, a concession that was not granted to recently recruited nurses.

"We agreed that even the younger nurses will be able to work the 46-and-two-thirds-hour week," Mr Cini said.

Protesting against overcrowding in wards, nurses had complained that it was not in their job description to give intravenous (IV) medication to patients.

The MUMN said that nurses administered IV medication out of their own good will and, insisting that it was the doctors' task to apply IV medication, it ordered its members to stop administering IV medication and infusion. The directive was issued five weeks ago.

The Health Directorate and the MUMN agreed that nurses who feel they are competent to carry out intravenous medication would continue to do so during the day. However, other nurses will be trained for the task.

Before the deadlock was broken, the Medical Association of Malta had said it would set up an action committee to draw up directives for doctors, on whom the responsibility of intravenous medication had become an extra burden.

Among other directives the MUMN had told nurses they should not leave their wards unless they needed to carry dangerous drugs or to accompany a sick patient from one ward to another.