The nurses’ union is threatening to issue directives aimed at relieving pressure on its members in hospitals across the country, who it says are overworked and taken for granted.

In an open letter, Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses president Paul Pace called on Health Minister Godfrey Farrugia to postpone the introduction of the new services until understaffing and space problems were resolved.

Mr Pace said nurses working at Mater Dei Hospital had complained about a decision taken earlier this week to open another ward by dismantling the psychiatric outpatients section. He said this new ward required at least another 12 nurses, which meant depleting further the number of nurses in other wards and hospitals.

The opening of another new ward is a slap in the face of all nurses

He said there were already two wards being manned by one nurse per shift instead of two, while medical and surgical wards had three or four nursing vacancies.

Moreover, there was a lack of nurses at the Intensive Therapy Unit where one nurse had to attend to two or three patients rather than the usual one-to-one.

He said the “mind-boggling” decision to open another ward was taken when the Gozo Hospital was awaiting an allocation of 10 more nurses.

“The opening of another new ward is a slap in the face of all nurses because it means their pressures are being ignored by your ministry. If there are new nurses to be recruited these should be used to address the vacancies in areas where the current nursing service is being jeopardised; that is the way forward,” he said.

He added: “Nurses are getting tired; nurses are working under huge pressures and such constraints have to be taken into consideration and not taken for granted. Nurses are fed up of being used as a political ball game of blaming the previous administration to justify the present state of affairs. This is not a political issue.”