There is a no privacy or respite for patients receiving medical treatment in the corridor of a new ward recently opened at Mater Dei Hospital as it is already taking in more patients than it can handle.
The elderly patients are constantly exposed to visitors entering the ward and medical staff attending to other patients. While hospitals are meant to be places of recovery, proper rest is an effort for patients held in a noisy corridor where lights are never turned off.
Those visiting the hospital are guided to the makeshift wards with handwritten signs hastily stuck up on walls with tape
Times of Malta yesterday spent a few hours going around the ward and problem areas to get a better picture of what patients were facing after receiving complaints of overcrowding.
Facilities are inadequate, with only two toilets in the new Medical Admissions Unit 4 (MAU4). While the other wards have TV and Wi-Fi, MAU4 is about basics. There are not even enough trolleys for all the beds within the ward, so patients have to leave their personal belongings on a chair or the floor.
Yesterday, there were 28 patients at MAU4, which replaces what was formerly the psychiatric unit. The new ward is part of the government’s plan to convert specialised units that are underutilised into wards to increase the number of available beds for patients. MAU 4 was set to have 22 beds.
Mater Dei needed 400 more beds to handle acute cases, Health Minister Godfrey Farrugia said last January. The significant shortage is distinct from any beds that could be required for rehabilitation purposes. He said the number of beds at the hospital was increased by 53 in 2013 and another 56 were to be added later this year, including the ones already made available at MAU4.
The bed shortage problem at Mater Dei is as dire as ever, particularly at Emergency where makeshift wards are being created in corridors blocked off by temporary partitions.
Visitors are forced to stand by patients’ beds, crowding the narrow passageways and limiting even further the space available for those needing treatment. Those visiting the hospital are guided to the makeshift wards with handwritten signs hastily stuck up on walls with tape.
The lift at the foyer taking visitors down to the emergency ward is blocked off with a line of chairs with a notice saying it is ‘out of order’.
The lift and the stairs adjacent to it are out of bounds because they lead to the corridor being used to treat patients at Emergency, leading to some confusion among visitors on how to reach the ward.
Security staff at the hospital could be seen spending a significant amount of their time guiding visitors around the ‘corridor wards’.
The nurses’ union is clamouring for the construction of a new hospital to solve the severe bed shortage at Mater Dei.
While agreeing that there was “definitely a need” for more hospital beds to treat acute cases, the doctors’ association in January advised caution noting there were not enough doctors and other hospital staff to cater for the building of a new hospital or even an expansion of Mater Dei.
Questions sent to the Health Ministry yesterday remained unanswered at the time of writing.