Nurses at the newly opened Mater Dei hospital are starting to get déjà-vu. Just less than a year into the new state-of-the-art acute hospital, Malta’s nurses are having to face problems they thought would have been left behind at St Luke’s Hospital.
The nursing union is currently in discussion with ministry officials over the disputed payment of a premium they were promised in a pre-electoral agreement. The second part of a €582.32 (Lm250) premium is due on 21 April, but the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses (MUMN) claims the Treasury is not going to pay it, claiming the first payment in February was issued “irregularly”.
But nurses who speak to MaltaToday appear unaware of the dispute. What’s bothering them is the spill-over of patients into the day care unit (DCU) – and they fear the situation could get worse. Staffing is thin, and unable to cope with the extra 30-bed ward recently opened in the DCU.
“While the day care unit was supposed to keep patients for just a day or less while they recuperate from day surgery – where they would be gradually woken up and taken home soon after – we are seeing patients from other wards being recuperated inside the DCU,” a nurse who spoke under confidentiality, told MaltaToday.
Just weeks before the elections, the ward seems to have turned into a “round-the-clock” ward: patients who cannot be given beds in other medical, surgical and special care wards are being kept in the DCU.
“It defeats the scope of the ‘special’ DCU which should be relieving the pressure from the other wards,” another nurse said. “What happens then is that, with other patients taking up beds in the DCU, there is no place for day surgery patients to convalesce. The result is that surgery gets cancelled, and more patients have to wait.”
Another nurse spells out the situation in graver terms: “What had to be a ward that opens from 7am to 6pm, has now turned into a 24/7 inpatient ward.”
Even more problematic is the fact that the DCU is not equipped for medical and surgery patients. “It is not equipped for the necessary medicine they might require, because it was never meant to cater for these patients. This means that nursing staff in the DCU have to run around other wards trying to get the drugs they need for these ‘new’ patients.”
Even more ironic is the fact that with day-care patients being turned away because they would not find a bed after their day surgery, these patients are now asking for a bed in the Mater Dei corridors.
“It is ironic because at St Luke’s, we would hear patients complaining about being placed in corridors,” a nurse says. “Now they want to be in the corridors so they can get their operation over and done with and convalesce as quickly as possible. Before at St Luke’s, there were an extra ten ‘corridor’ beds to a ward.”
To nurses, it has meant an added burden. “DCU nurses cannot handle the clerical work they have to carry out because of the influx of new patients. The clerical work is therefore passed on to other nurses – nurses who thought that their move to Mater Dei would have relieved them of this clerical work in he first place.
“Even Sundays, which were previously reserved for restocking medicines and finishing up clerical work, are now taken up by normal duties. Nurses from other wards are being transferred to assist the influx of patients in the DCU. Even taking a lunch break seems to be a privilege: we get asked to rush back from break as soon as possible.”
The nurses who spoke to MaltaToday say they feel powerless at the state of affairs. “It is more work – I don’t like being taken out of my environment because of the problems at the DCU. I shouldn’t be hating my job.”
MUMN president Paul Pace has warned of industrial action after declaring an industrial dispute at Zammit Clapp Hospital, warning it will issue directives from 21 April.
Pace said “bureaucratic excuses” were being used not to pay the remainder of the premium agreed before the elections. The first payment was issued in February but the union said it had been informed that the second, due this month, would not be issued. The Treasury is claiming the bonus issued on 21 February, three weeks before the general election, was issued irregularly, and that the bonuses specified in the collective agreement should have been issued six months in arrears.
The MUM met social policy minister John Dalli and parliamentary secretaries Joe Cassar and Mario Galea, himself a nurse, for a reconciliation meeting.

mvella@mediatoday.com.mt