Health authorities and nurses agree on more hospital beds

Mater Dei Hospital’s medical and surgical wards will each have an extra bed that will be placed in the largest room in line with an agreement signed by the nurses’ union and the health authorities, yesterday.

The extra beds will be removed later on this year when the new holding bay, which consists of a fully equipped ward, is expected to open.

Wards that have extra beds will be allocated more nurses both during the day and at night. Originally, the government said it would only increase the number of nurses during the day.

The agreement was reached during a three-hour long meeting yesterday afternoon and attended by officials of the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses and the Health Department.

The two parties also agreed to schedule a series of meetings to discuss other problems at the state hospital.

Over the past weeks, Mater Dei experienced severe overcrowding as many patients were admitted following the sharp temperature drop.

In an attempt to tackle the problem, the health authorities decided to increase the number of beds in medical and surgical wards by two or three.

The union disagreed saying the wards were not equipped to deal with more patients and, furthermore, nurses were not coping with the workload.

In a press conference before the meeting, union president Paul Pace pointed out that the bed shortage problem got worse over the years.

“The country lost four years... The only solution was crisis management,” he said.

Since Mater Dei opened four years ago, the union had been calling for meetings to address such issues.

But the Health Department only accepted the request yesterday, after the press conference was called, Mr Pace said. He pointed out that increasing beds was not enough.

The hospital had to ensure that the necessary facilities, such as oxygen points and buzzers, were available too.

There had to be changes in working practices that might include asking consultants to be present on Sundays.

As the situation stood now, patients were not discharged because consultants did not work on Sundays, Mr Pace noted.

He complained about what he termed as the general lack of policies in the hospital.

There were no guidelines on admissions, discharges and many other everyday practices, he said.

In a warning made before the afternoon meeting, Mr Pace said the union was ready to take industrial action if the health authorities did not take the chronic bed shortage seriously.

Any action taken would be aimed at increasing patient care. Nurses would, for example, be instructed to prioritise patients over other duties, Mr Pace had warned.