Crucial services needed for critically ill patients were not being delivered at Mater Dei Hospital due to a lack of funds, the MUMN claimed this afternoon.

The nurses' union said that although doctors regularly ordered constant watch on certain patients, the hospital management was not hiring the necessary number of carers needed for the service to be given.

Constant monitoring was normally ordered when patients were critically ill or demented or when they could harm themselves or run away from hospital. 

The union pointed out that if a patient managed to slip out of hospital or committed suicide, the nurses on that particular ward would face criminal charges.

"The current situation is totally unfair on the nurses and midwives working in MDH, since such surveillance requires extra staff  which the management of Mater Dei Hospital is not supplying," the union said.

It said it had informed judges and magistrates of the predicament which the nurses had found themselves in. Similarly, people who initiated civil cases should take the hospital authorities to court and not the individual nurses, the union added.