Overcrowding at Mater Dei Hospital has reached “alarming levels” and is hitting staff and patients badly, according to the head of the nurses’ union.
“Patients will eventually die in this crisis,” claimed Paul Pace, president of the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses.
Patients at the Day Care Unit were packed like sardines yesterday, with 59 beds in a ward which usually takes 15, sources told Times of Malta.
Another 140 patients were spread out in corridors, ward extensions and side wards around the Emergency Department.
When this newspaper visited the hospital yesterday morning, the ophthalmic ward had been taken over by day cases, with patients having no privacy, no bedside tables, no armchairs and no wardrobes, resorting to storing their clothes in bags under their beds.
A Health Ministry spokesman admitted the situation was as the new government had found it on being elected: “precarious”.
“The system is rotten but we’re working on it. So far, the government has had to react to the several problems.
“The aim is to become proactive, but it’s taking time. The situation is precarious and we want all the stakeholders on board in this process.”
The spokesman said that, so far, 40 new beds had been created at the hospital: 31 in the acute wards, five in the Burns Unit and four in the Day Ward Urology.
By the end of February, another 22 beds will be added to the bed stock. Moreover, the number of nurses had increased by 180 since the election, with another 20 expected to join the workforce in the coming weeks.
Acknowledging the great sacrifices being made by healthcare professionals at the hospital, the spokesman thanked them all for their efforts, adding that they were needed to bring about a quality leap in the provision of healthcare.
The patient has no dignity at all
Mr Pace warned that, if the hospital management and the ministry did not tackle the situation, the union would have to resort to directives in the best interests of its members and of patients “who are not only getting an inferior service but are being put at risk”.
“We cannot continue playing around with patients’ lives. The situation is fast-becoming unsustainable,” he said.
“Nurses and hospital staff are overworked, stressed, frustrated and fed up.”
Mr Pace confirmed that the situation over the past few days had deteriorated to the extent that “medical cases flooded the surgical wards”, with other wards being turned into surgical wards.
“I can confirm that the patient has no dignity at all and they’ll pay a price for it as patients will eventually die in this crisis.
“We have had wards with a hodgepodge of ailments, some patients with orthopaedic problems, another with a chest infection and the patient next to her in hospital for a gynaecological ailment – all in the same ward.”
To make matters worse, Mr Pace said, patients admitted to hospital for day procedures such as hernia, haemorrhoids and for the removal of lumps were being discharged directly from the operating theatres because there was no space to spend the usual two-hour recovery period.
“Nurses are in a mess. They’re short of staff, have no proper facilities to work with and the (former health minister) John Dalli report compiled for the government does not even mention the problem of bed shortage, let alone provide solutions.
“He just decided to attack staff without seeing the reality of their suffering on a daily basis,” Mr Pace said.
He also claimed that consultants were being “pressured” to discharge patients due to the bed shortage, only to have their GPs send them back within two or three days because they were still ill.