Nurses to step up action

Nurses have resolved to take their fight with the government over understaffing to new heights, threatening to stop treating patients at Boffa Hospital from Monday when they are understaffed.

Nurses will also stop admitting patients to Zammit Clapp Hospital and St Vincent de Paul Residence for the elderly, which are both full to capacity, unless more staff is employed, and extra beds will be removed. Those working at the hospital's Renal Unit will no longer be on call.

Moreover, nurses are also threatening to walk out of operating theatres if the government goes ahead and employs nursing technicians, whose qualifications are deemed inferior. District health centres will be shut down until the problem is resolved, the president of the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses, Paul Pace told a rally, attended by some 100 nurses and midwives, last night.

Nurses have also been ordered not the change dressings of patients who are not in their ward and patients will not be allowed to wait in pantries before undergoing surgery when no beds are available. Theatre nurses will start taking their break on time and a work-to-rule directive has been ordered across the board.

The MUMN called for the resignation of John Cachia, the director general for health care services, who they say is partly to blame for the acute nursing shortage.

The long-drawn dispute revolves around staff shortages, the failure to provide staff meals and the lack of a professional warrant.

Nurses have been taking industrial action since the end of October, declining non-nursing duties and taking blood samples, a measure which has affected hundreds of people and left the authorities with no choice but to stop non-emergency blood tests at health centres.

"This is not a fight against patients but against the authorities. We want the necessary staff complement in order to be able to give a better service," Mr Pace said.

He accused Social Policy Minister John Dalli of being disloyal, failing to observe the provisions of the collective agreement signed last year and ignoring the union's proposals of a five-year-plan. "How can we sign an agreement with the Prime Minister and then it is not respected? Who is the Prime Minister, Dr Gonzi or Mr Dalli?"

Mr Pace said the authorities had given up on employing more nurses and were instead looking to employ nursing technicians in a bid to open more operating theatres. But the union believed these new staff members did not have the necessary skills to safeguard patient safety.

"We are not going to be accomplices in jeopardising patient safety. The minute they arrive, we will be walking out of theatres," he warned.

Present for the rally was Malta Union of Teachers president John Bencini.