Long waits for beds in hospital wards, emergency nurses say

Patients were being stripped of their dignity having to wait for hours in Mater Dei Hospital’s emergency department for a bed in a ward, John Zammit, president of the Emergency Nurses Union, said yesterday.

“The situation is similar to that of a Third World country”, Mr Zammit said, saying patients were left on a stretcher for up to eight hours, in crowded casualty areas, waiting to be transferred to a ward.

Mr Zammit said that, on Tuesday, about 35 patients were left waiting for a bed for six hours. “We have 90-year-olds waiting in the same cubicle next to 18 year olds,” he said, pointing out that the problem meant there was a lack of space for doctors to see new patients.

The union explained that the emergency ward used two areas- Area 1 and Area 2 – to examine patients requiring urgent care. On Tuesday, 25 patients were “admitted” to Area 2, which only had nine cubicles, and another 13 patients waited in Area 1 for a ward bed. The corridor “had to be improvised as a ward because there were no beds available in the hospital”, the union said, stressing that this was unsafe for patients.

Moreover, patients admitted to Area 2 had no adequate basic hygiene facilities because only one bathroom was available, with no shower. In this area privacy was limited because cubicles were shared, the union said. It pointed out that patients were only given a sandwich for lunch, a practice the union deemed unethical.

Mr Zammit said this had been a recurrent problem ever since the migration from St Luke’s Hospital because Mater Dei operated under a directive prohibiting the setting up of beds in corridors. This caused a problem of a serious lack of beds. While a ward in St Luke’s could take up to 40 patients, most Mater Dei wards could take only 24 patients each, meaning the new hospital effectively had less bed space than the old hospital, he said.

Mr Zammit said the union had talks with the Health Department to remedy the situation but nothing had been done so far.

Doctors complained that the situation derived from “bad management”. They said that more needed to be done to empty the ward beds faster, pointing out that many patients waiting to be transferred elsewhere for long-term care could wait up to a month, occupying much-needed ward bed space in the meantime. Questions sent to the Health Ministry remained unanswered at the time of writing.