Patient ‘resuscitated in corridor’ as bed shortage bites again

A patient was resuscitated in a Casualty corridor yesterday while waiting for a bed in the ward – the second such occurrence in less than a year in the new acute hospital which is suffering from serious bed shortages, the Emergency Nurses Union said in a statement yesterday.

Other patients watched while the patient went into cardiac arrest in the corridor of Casualty’s Area 2, a six-bedded cubicle which was full to the brim with no less than 22 patients.

“The dignity of the patients is finished in there. The hospital is like that of a third world,” union president John Zammit said, depicting what it was like for the other patients to see one beside them bleeding and dying.

The patient, he said, was quickly taken to a separate resuscitation room and was brought back to life.

“However, we might have not got there on time,” Mr Zammit said, when contacted.

“This is a situation which is repeating itself,” the frustrated president said, referring to an incident on February 19 when another patient was resuscitated in the same corridor.

The bed shortage at the state-of-the-art hospital is a resounding problem that surfaced only shortly after Mater Dei opened. The limited ward space means patients in casualty have to wait on a stretcher in the corridors until a bed vacancy arises.

The stretchers are filed in two main corridors known as Area 2 and Paediatric casualty. At 7 a.m. yesterday, there were some 31 patients waiting for a bed in the ward in these two corridors, the union said.

Most of them had been waiting for over 24 hours.

The union called on the Health Department to take prompt action and find a quick solution to the situations arising from the bed shortage, which they said were happening repeatedly and putting patients’ health and staff safety at risk.

“It is not acceptable for us to see patients suffer,” Mr Zammit said, pointing out that the authorities knew about the problem through several meetings and action needed to be taken.

The government had to do something to gather these patients in a decent place, he urged.

The authorities had been informed about the incident through an incident report filed by the nurses, he said.