Mental health patients in Mount Carmel Hospital could have been deprived of treatment when nurses following industrial action refused to administer medication delivered by other nurses brought in by a subcontractor, the Health Ministry said.
The management, however, intervened and the ministry gave an assurance all the patients involved were being given their medication.
Health Minister Joe Cassar expressed disappointment at the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses’ decision to step up industrial action, which the ministry deemed “insensitive” and “irresponsible” due to their effect on patients.
“I think industrial action should never affect a patient,” Dr Cassar said.
A ministry spokesman said subcontracted nurses had to be employed by the hospital management due to industrial action whereby the MUMN ordered members not to pick up medicines from the pharmacies themselves.
This irked union president Paul Pace who said: “It is typical for the government to work against a directive rather than addressing the problem.”
In reaction, the union refused to administer the dependency drugs delivered by the subcontracted personnel, saying it was unethical to do this when the drugs had not been collected from the pharmacy by the nurses because they could not vouch for the drug’s constitution.
This latest industrial action is one of many affecting hospitals and health centres in the past months, ordered by the union to protest against staff shortages suffered by the profession.
Earlier this month, the MUMN had expressed disappointment at the University for abiding by the numerus clausus for the nursing courses at a time when staff shortages were such a large problem.
Speaking about the ongoing University dispute, Dr Cassar said the nurses’ union should expect the same standard of nurses from the University as was expected with foreign nurses applying to work in Malta.
“On one hand, the nursing council is setting high standards for foreigners who apply to work in Malta and, on the other, the union is continuously badgering the government into accepting all the applicants who applied at the University without looking at quality and patients,” Dr Cassar said.
“If we seriously believe we can get so many people, put them in a lecture room and get them to become nurses, I think we are fooling the Maltese nation,” Dr Cassar continued.
The ministry had recently asked a mediator to address the problems with the union, Dr Cassar said.
“It is true communication sometimes broke down between us because there is a specific policy we abide by: as long as there is industrial action, the government doesn’t meet a union before there is goodwill and show they are at least willing to lift the directive and we can move on,” Dr Cassar explained.
He said an emergency meeting with MUMN secretary general Colin Galea was held on Friday morning where there seemed to be goodwill from the union. However, the very same evening, MUMN issued a new directive, the minister said.
“The government has tried and is continuing to do its very best. Since January we’ve had 300 applicants from nurses all over the world to come and work in Malta,” Dr Cassar said. He explained that the application process for foreign nurses was a lengthy one because the nurses had to pass through an inde-pendent autonomous nursing council.
“We are all into standards and that’s good. But we need to compare standards with standards,” Dr Cassar insisted.