Monday, 17th November 2008 - 16:51CET

Health Department suspends some blood tests

The Department of Hedalth said this afternoon that blood testing for medical check-ups at health centres has been suspended in view of industrial action by nurses.

Patients who are tested because they take Warfarina should however continue to call at health centre for their blood tests.

The department said it wanted to show solidarity with patients who were suffering because of reasons ‘known only to the MUMN’.

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Comments

Damian Gouder (on 17/11/08)

Venous withdrawal of blood is not primarily a nursing duty . Only nurses with extended roles have some form of legal coverage for that even though it is common practice for all nurses to carry out such a procedure out of goodwill in the unavailability of a doctor. However hospital authorities and people like C.Camilleri now seem to be taking nurses' goodwill for granted. And it is this attitude that may have resulted for such industrial actions to be taken. So why should one have his salary reduced because he/she is not performing a task for which he/she is not paid and covered for in the first place?

NURSING IS NOT JUST ABOUT BLOOD TESTS and the reality here is that there is an acute problem with staff shortage, which in turn leads to reducing the overall quality of care.

M Grech (on 17/11/08)

I cannot understand the reason behind suspending a service that is being hit by an industrial action no matter how irresponsible such action might be. What has gov got to gain from such a move? Will the suspension be lifted once the action comes to an end?

C.Camilleri (on 17/11/08)

Stop their payments.As long as they continue to receive their full pay no one can blame them to continue with their silly protest. Our P.M. said recently that he take care of our money like his own. Now is the time to put this into practice. Paying Govt employees for not doing their day's work is just squandering our hard earn money.