Nursing wounds

One of the reasons given for the nurses' union planned industrial action recently was the shortage of nurses. The union also implied that a reason for this shortage is the numerus clausus introduced to limit the number of students accepted at the University's Institute of Health Care (IHC).

The IHC was established in 1987 to upgrade the nursing school set up at St Luke's Hospital in 1965. The institute's first health care course was the B.Sc. Nursing Studies, with the first group graduating in June 1992. Other courses were launched in other health care specialisations at degree, diploma and certificate level.

However, shortly after, the Department of Health started hesitating in recruiting all the fresh graduates from the institute working on the erratic calculation that the department made in determining the number of nurses required for the health services. This lack of sensitivity towards the need of nursing and the unemployment of new graduates led to a number of negative chain reactions.

The Health Department, which had supported the IHC for many years both financially and through the secondment of personnel, reduced its commitment and support towards the institute. The health authorities must have thought that they could make better use of the finance and personnel in other areas, such as in the development of the new Mater Dei Hospital.

The IHC felt the pinch of this reduction in finances, personnel and support from the health authorities, and pushed for a numerus clausus. Hence the present lack of nurses. At that time, the unions supported the IMC's request for a numerus clausus as they saw the prospect of unemployed nurses as potentially undermining their bargaining power at the industrial negotiations negotiations table.

Doubts were also expressed regarding the diploma and certificate courses and whether they were of a university status. This led to the closure of the Pre-Vocational School and some courses, such as those of health assistants, were discontinued. The end result was more pressure on the nursing staff who are today doing duties which could be carried out by other trained personnel.

The authorities have promised to recruit about 100 foreign nurses to address this self-induced shortage. The health department reportedly only succeeded to recruit about 13 from Romania. The nursing union estimates that 400 nurses are now needed and that in the next two to three years the number needed would be nearer to 1,000. The 60 nurses who will be graduating this year are not even enough to replace those who retire or go out on maternity leave.

Sustaining a high quality education in the health field is now in order. Otherwise Mater Dei Hospital will be a state-of-the art building offering an inferior service with frustrated health professionals, not least in the nursing profession.

The appointment of John Dalli as minister responsible for Health, who is competent to deal with those the nursing union described as 'inefficient people', together with Mario Galea, one of the first B.Sc. nursing graduates, and Joe Cassar, a highly professional medical consultant, as parliamentary secretaries within his ministry, augurs well for the successful resolution of this situation.

It is now time for the new minister and his parliamentary secretaries to push their weight in the Cabinet and demand the development of the University's IHC and the introduction of training programmes at the various hospitals, especially to ensure the training of health assistants. This should be done together with the agreed programmes for medical specialities, which is also incidentally running behind schedule.