An elderly woman has spoken of how an operation for a fractured leg was put off three times.

The 80-year old said that she had been waiting to be taken to the operating theatre after a 14-hour fast when the surgery was postponed, and then she had to endure two other fasts before finally being operated upon on her fractured leg.

“I was confined to bed the whole time,” the woman, whose operation was delayed for four days, said.

She kept being told “maybe tomorrow”, only to hear every evening that her much-anticipated surgery would not be carried out that day because more urgent operations had cropped up, and they got priority.

This was not a one-off case as orthopaedic staff members confirmed.

“The worst is when they take over two days to go to theatre. Sometimes even the consultants apologise for the delay,” one staff member said when contacted.

A doctor said that when the number of casualties increased, the list just “overflows” and the pre-scheduled list of operations kept being postponed to keep up with the urgent cases.

According to ward members, the patients were kept “starved” from midnight on the possible day of surgery and only allowed to eat after 2 p.m. if the theatre confirmed the operation could not take place that day. This cycle is repeated until the surgical procedure is finally carried out.

According to a Mater Dei Hospital study carried out between February and May 2008, an overwhelming 69 per cent of patients had to wait more than 24 hours for their trauma operation.

“The reason for the delay in surgery among those who waited for more than 24 hours was lack of available theatre time in 223 patients (52 per cent),” according to the study.

The audit, which was only released during a short presentation at a Malta Medical School Conference and has yet to be published, also indicates that 26 per cent of available theatre time was spent in between cases.

The Health Ministry confirmed the urgent cases were taken to theatre immediately. Semi-urgent cases were put on a list depending on various factors such as chronic medical conditions that needed to be stabilised before anaesthesia, theatre and theatre staff availability, the ministry spokesman said.

The spokesman said a tentative list of patients to be operated upon on a particular day was drawn up in a way that included more urgent cases with smaller operations fitted i n between complex ones.

He said semi-urgent cases could not be guaranteed because several factors could affect the time taken for more urgent surgeries.

The ministry admitted to a chronic shortage of nursing staff but said there were plans to have another theatre available to handle trauma once the shortage was eased, possibly through the recruitment of foreign nurses.

The president of the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses, Paul Pace said the issue was not only due to a shortage of nursing staff but also due to “time wastage”.

He complained of doctors started theatre work late when nurses were available from 7 a.m. The nursing staff also had to be beefed up, Mr Pace said, adding that he did not have much confidence in the employment of foreign nurses as “these use Malta as a stepping stone to work in larger, better paying European countries”.