For one reason or another, Mater Dei Hospital is rarely out of the news. Most people agree that it is a state-of-the-art hospital insofar as medical treatment is concerned but it falls short of expectations in some other respects.
The hospital is generally in the news for reasons that ought to have been foreseen when the building was still on the drawing board. However, politicisation of the project, with all the twists and turns that followed over the years, has produced a hospital that meets the people’s aspirations in health care only in part. Credit for the top-notch quality of health care goes to all who work there, including, of course, the nurses, who are most in the news these days.
Given the parameters and background of the shortcomings that exist, it would seem that the best way forward is for representatives of all involved to put their heads together and see how they can get to grips with the problems. Recrimination will not get any injured party anywhere. Nurses may have one hundred and one reasons for feeling aggrieved at the turn of events but resorting to a threatening attitude, as their union has a knack of doing, will not help to bring about a lasting solution.
Industrial action can only make matters worse, particularly for patients and, surely, this is not something that the nurses would want to see happening to people under their care.
There would seem to be only one sensible option open to nurses, that of taking part in whatever exercise is launched to see what can be done to bring about improvements to their working conditions and the facilities at the hospital.
Pressed by the people’s outrage over overcrowding, the government has set up a task force – another one – to go deeper into the problem and is taking other measures in an effort to ease the situation.
New arrangements for admission to the emergency wing and plans for the building of a new 16-bed ward adjacent to the emergency ward are two such measures.
Health Minister Joe Cassar has said that the setting up of the task force is meant as a follow-up to the work done by an inter-ministerial committee. Those participating in this exercise will be able to analyse the recommendations made by the inter-ministerial committee to see how best to implement them.
Yes, things at the hospital ought to have been done better from the start but, since it’s useless to keep on arguing about this for ever, the most logical step now is for all the parties concerned to grapple with the problems in a sensible manner.
The nurses’ union, which has such an essential stake in all that happens at the hospital, would be making a grave mistake if it were to stay out of the task force.
If it feels unhappy over the terms of reference, it ought to work for a change of such conditions within the task force where its voice would have greater weight than if it were to keep shouting from the outside, rattling the sabre and, in the process, worrying patients and their families.
If the union wants to improve matters at the hospital and to safeguard the interests of its members, as there is no doubt that it does, the logical way forward for it is to be directly involved in whatever talks are held over the hospital problems. Again, this is the only option that makes sense.