Union accuses government of intimidating nurses

The Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses yesterday threatened to step up industrial action at Mater Dei and Mount Carmel hospitals, holding the Health Ministry responsible for the “intimidation of nurses”.

It said it registered its warning in writing after official letters were sent on Friday to nurses involved in industrial action at Mount Carmel.

The ministry advised the nurses they would be violating the Industrial Relations Act if they followed an MUMN directive not to administer medicines and treatment to patients.

Forum, a confederation of 11 trade unions, yesterday came out in support of the nurses’ union, which forms part of its grouping, blasting the Health Ministry for telling a “blatant lie”.

It said the claim was made solely to put nurses “in a very bad light” in the eyes of the public, in spite of them battling against a chronic nationwide shortage of 550 nurses.

It added that the Health Ministry seemed to expect nurses to leave patients on their own in wards in order to go and obtain all the required medicines needed for their care.

“All the MUMN is telling nurses to do is not to allow themselves to be stuck in queues waiting to pick up medicines from stores, which patients need, when their duty is to be on their wards,” Forum said.

It added that nurses in European hospitals received everything essential to patients’ care from other people employed specifically for that task. It had tirelessly told the authorities that such staff was needed here but its message had fallen “on deaf ears”.

“The government should thank nurses publicly instead of attacking them in light of the work they are doing because of the serious shortage, which has made it impossible for them to take any leave and which is seeing some working up to 80 hours of overtime in order to compensate for it,” Forum said.

The MUMN is protesting against a nursing shortage and is also complaining about the lack of policy and a generator to cover Mount Carmel Hospital.

No headway was made in a meeting held on Saturday between the Health Minister and nurses’ union to resolve the deadlock, amid warnings that the union’s actions could endanger patients’ lives.

In protest at staff shortages, the industrial action escalated on Friday when union nurses were instructed not to pick up medicines from the Mater Dei pharmacy, not to give the treatment that was brought to the ward by subcontracted nurses and to leave the ward if patients became aggressive due to missing treatment.

The directives are deemed “illegal” and “irresponsible” by the government.

The union is particularly irked about the numerus clausus for the nursing course at University, which, it claims, excludes potential nursing students from joining the course.

The MUMN is expected to hold a press conference this morning.