Nurses are not coping with the increase in patients at Mater Dei Hospital’s medical and surgical wards, where single rooms are being crammed with two beds, according to their trade union.
“At the moment, there are 110 extra beds at Mater Dei. This means there are three to four wards missing. That’s a whole wing. Patients are being placed in corridors, holding bays and, now, single rooms. But the number of nurses remains the same,” the president of the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses, Paul Pace, said.
The state hospital has been plagued with bed shortage problems ever since it opened its doors four years ago. To cope with this pro-blem, patients are sometimes kept in corridors or other areas not originally designed for beds.
Mater Dei has a bed capacity of 830 but is running with 940 beds, according to Mr Pace’s calculations. He explained that the increase in number of patients was jeopardising the health of those receiving treatment there.
He pointed out that the single rooms in the medical and surgical wards were not designed to cater for two people. In case of an emergency, nurses would not be able to offer the necessary care, Mr Pace warned. Patients were also being deprived of privacy and dignity because there were no curtains separating the beds in these rooms, he said.
The food system was overloaded and the food warmers and trolleys were not keeping up with the extra mouths to feed.
This could lead to food poisoning, he continued. “I can’t understand how, after spending millions of euros on the new hospital, it is not big enough. It’s become St Luke’s Hospital-style, with patients being crammed everywhere,” he said.
Next week the union will be calling a meeting with nurses involved to decide what can be done in the best interest of patients and nurses, he said.
A spokesman for the Health Ministry said: “We understand the MUMN’s concerns and are dealing with the current unusual influx of patients. The ministry thanks all professionals who are doing their very best to deliver the best possible service.”
The Malta Independent on Sunday last week reported Health Minister Joseph Cassar saying that the ministry had proposed converting 38 single-bed rooms into two-bed rooms to ease the difficult situation at the hospital, but was encountering resistance from the nurses’ trade union representatives.