Updated - MUMN: New hospital or Mater Dei extension needed to solve bed shortage problem

Updated - Adds government reaction

MUMN President Paul Pace said today that the government had not shouldered political responsibility for the bad planning which led to overcrowding at Mater Dei Hospital. It was not even acknowledging the problem and was not making any long-term planning to solve it.

Speaking at a press conference this morning, Mr Pace said the union had long been complaining about the situation at Mater Dei, without any major improvement.

He said that when the government announced the Task Force to discuss the situation of hospital overcrowding, the union had sought information on its terms of reference.

Those terms of reference, Mr Pace said, showed how the health minister was 'in denial', without reference being made to the problem of overcrowding, speaking of challenges instead.

"The government is failing to admit that the hospital is too small and there is a shortage of beds," he said. "Changing work practices, on its own, will not solve the problem."

The government, he said, was ignoring the problems and resorting to short-term solutions. Patients in some cases were also being described as 'bed blockers'.

The union felt that the government was abdicating its responsibility for long-term planning, he said.

Four years had been wasted since this problem cropped up as soon as Mater Dei Hospital opened, he said.

What irked him most, Mr Pace said, was how the government wanted to put patients in every corner it could find, like a sack of potatoes. But this was inadequate for proper patient care. Beds had to be accompanied by armchairs where patients could rest out of their bed - for their own benefit. Putting two beds in single-bed rooms meant that patients lacked privacy - because there was no curtain in between. There was also no second patient's buzzer, no second oxygen point and nowhere where the patient could put his clothes. Patients were ending up putting their clothes and under belonging on the floor under the bed.

Nurses could also not properly handle the patients because there was inadequate space.

No task force or union had a right to deny patients their rights, including the rights of proper care, privacy and dignity, Mr Pace said.

Reacting to comments by Health Minister Joe Cassar, Mr Pace said politics were involved in this issue because the size of the current hospital was determined by the government, and it had ignored repeated warnings, at the proper time, that the hospital was badly planned. No one had shouldered political responsibility. St Luke's Hospital faced a bed shortage 60 years after it opened. Mater Dei faced the same problem after a week.

The terms of reference of the Task Force, he said, only spoke of temporary actions to tackle overcrowding, by proposing to put patients everywhere, including in other institutions. He was also proposing short-term policies with regard to the deployment of medical staff.

"We will not participate in a task force which will go against the principles of nursing care and good practice. We will not participate in a situation where the government continues to deny the people the belated reform of the primary health service. We will not be party in decisions where nurses will continue to be de-motivated. We will not join a task force after our long term recommendations were ignored. We will not be party in political decisions which politicians should have taken to ensure there were enough beds. We will not a join force of management by crisis," Mr Pace said.

He said the MUMN would have been prepared to join the task force had it been set up to discuss long-term solutions, such as extending the hospital or building a new one alongside Mater Dei, as was the case of the Oncology Department. It would also have joined the task force had it been set up to discuss a reform of primary health care to avoid the need for people to go to hospital, he said.

Mr Pace said it was shameful that the government had tried to redeploy nurses from health centres to new wards at Karin Grech Hospital in a matter of hours without consulting the union. It was not true, he said, that the MUMN had ordered the nurses to refuse the redeployment, as the minister had claimed on TV. The nurses, he said, had been given a voluntary choice and they opted not to go. And indeed, one wondered what would have happened at the health centres had the nurses accepted the request.

Mr Pace also denied that the nurses were requesting a pay raise to cope with the additional beds. What they wanted, he said, was for the problem of the extra beds to be solved.

INTOLERABLE SITUATION IN OPERATING THEATRES

Mr Pace said the number of operations had not increased because of a change in work practices, but because the theatre nurses were being pressurised, to the extent that they were losing all motivation and some were resigning.

The established ratio of nurses to patients according to the nature of the operation was not being observed, he said, and this was not safe, he said.

This situation would not be tolerated any more and industrial action would be taken unless the situation improved and safe practice was observed by March 26.

PERSONAL ATTACKS

Reacting to personal attacks and claims that the MUMN was political, Mr Pace said that the fact that PL leader Joseph Muscat was repeating what the union was   saying was positive and showed that the points raised by the union were being acknowledged.

Mr Pace also denied that he would be a Labour candidate at the general election.

GOVERNMENT REACTION

In a reaction, the Health Ministry said the MUMN had an open invitation to join the task force.  It said the setting up of the task force was decided at a meeting attended by representatives of the MAM, the UHM, the GWU, the hospital management and the Health Department. The MUMN, although invited, had not attended.

The intention of those present was to  investigate the current situation at Mater Dei.

The ministry said the call made to nurses in primary health care to work at Karin Grech had been aimed at ensuring there was a better service to patients, along with better distribution of work. The offer was voluntary and limited to a period of time.

On the situation in operating theatres, the ministry said Health Minister Joseph Cassar recently visited the theatres and spoke to the nurses, praising them for their results. He also pointed out that 250 new nurses would start work shortly, easing the workload in various sections of the health service.

The ministry said that Mr Pace as a citizen, had a right to his political perspective.