Already lined with bedridden patients, Mater Dei Hospital’s corridors are set to be crowded even further due to a deadlock in discussions to extend a “temporary” agreement to transfer elderly patients to St Vincent de Paul Residence.
All we’re asking is for nurses there to give their colleagues at Mater Dei a helping hand- Health Minister
An agreement to transfer 21 such patients from Mater Dei last January freed up some much-needed beds at Malta’s national hospital.
But government hopes of extending the arrangement for a further two months have been stopped in their tracks by nurses’ union representatives, who have insisted that the extra beds should remain empty once they’re vacated.
“We already had four such agreements last year alone. How many times can you extend a so-called temporary agreement before it becomes permanent?” asked Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses President Paul Pace.
The impasse in extending the agreement will not affect the 21 extra patients currently at St Vincent de Paul, Mr Pace insisted. Under a new MUMN directive, nurses will not take in new patients to fill the extra beds that have been vacated.
He argued that, while nurses had consistently worked with the government and agreed to such temporary agreements, nothing was being done to resolve issues over the longer term. “Maybe the government got the impression that there’s no need to find long-term solutions, since it could rely on such ‘temporary’ arrangements,” Mr Pace mused. “But in the health sector, ‘temporary’ means weeks, not months on end.”
Health Minister Joe Cassar was having none of it. “The extra 21 beds mean one extra bed in each unit at St Vincent de Paul. All we’re asking is for nurses there to give their colleagues at Mater Dei a helping hand.”
Mater Dei is struggling with rising admissions, with Dr Cassar saying that this winter saw an added 20 hospital admissions per day. “Hospital admissions rose all across Europe, and we were no different,” the minister said.
Conditions were poor for both nurses and hospital patients. According to Mr Pace, “we’re cramming beds everywhere, but the number of nurses and the available space are what they are – wards don’t just sprout up.
“Patients aren’t a sack of potatoes which you can just haul into any empty space. They need oxygen points, buzzers, a bedside table...in some cases a CPR trolley can’t even fit beside a patient,” he said.
Meanwhile, future negotiations between the government and nursing representatives will now be more straightforward affairs, with the Emergency Nurses’ Union announcing yesterday that it was dissolving and amalgamating within MUMN structures.
Several nurses were already members of both unions and Mr Pace welcomed the development, saying that “given difficulties within the health and nursing sector, speaking as one voice will be beneficial. If anything, I feel more comfortable having more casualty ward expertise on my side,” he said.