Some 250 nurses at Mt Carmel Hospital have signed a petition declaring they cannot take responsibility for patients who are not being given one-to-one nursing prescribed by a consultant.

The petition was sent to the Health Minister and copied to the Attorney General, the chief medical officer at the hospital and the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses.

Psychiatric patients who are deemed critical, and can be a danger to themselves or others, are assigned a nurse to look after them alone.

But there are not enough nurses to cope with the number of critical cases, union president Paul Pace said.

Doctors were asking nurses to care for two or three critical patients when they were meant to focus their energy on one.

This placed nurses at a disadvantage since, if a critical patient hurt himself under their supervision, they could he held legally responsible.

Mr Pace added that the problem was worse since Mt Carmel Hospital, like other state medical centres, did not have policies in place to guide nurses on what to do in such circumstances.

For this reason the nurses at the mental hospital signed the petition clearly stating they did not want to he held responsible.

Parliamentary Secretary for Community Care, Mario Galea, said he was looking into the matter.

He agreed that nurses should not be held legally responsible unless they were actually negligent. He also said he was surprised at how many patients were prescribed one-to-one nursing care adding that perhaps professionals at the mental asylum were “playing it too safe”.