Doctors' union slams media tardiness reports

The Medical Association of Malta has slammed media reports about doctors who turned up late for work at St Luke's Hospital's outpatients' department saying they were premature.

MAM general secretary Martin Balzan said when contacted that the reports failed to mention the administrative problems which caused patients to wait for a long time at the outpatients' department.

The MAM said it recognised the employer's right to enforce discipline and "indeed make spot checks". "However, it sees no reason whatsoever why such information should be passed on to the press before adequate time is allowed for investigation and explanation by those concerned.

"This is completely unethical as it is an attempt to smear the whole medical profession. One simply cannot issue statements as if someone is definitely guilty before any explanation can be given. One hopes this is not being done for political expediency to put the blame of the shortcomings of the service on the medical profession."

The MAM said doctors performed operations at 6 p.m. even though they were supposed to stop work at 2.30 p.m. and non-urgent operations were being performed on weekends and public holidays to keep waiting lists down.

"If the authorities want to impose rigidity of management on doctors' work then the management will have to take full responsibility if all this extra work has to be cancelled," it warned.

The MAM said the long waiting times at the outpatients' department were often due to missing files, blood tests and X-rays. Dr Balzan said the MAM did not run the hospital and it was up to the administration to sort such things out.

When asked whether the MAM was giving any consideration to the inconvenience to patients, even if the tardiness was justified, Dr Balzan said the medical profession was already over-extended, coping with some 1,000 outpatient appointments a day.

"We are very flexible: we have never tried to limit the number of patients seen in an outpatient session, even though the service deteriorates as the numbers rise.

"The long waiting times are due to many reasons: often the doctor is late because of problems in other parts of the hospital. You cannot assume that all the tardiness was unjustified. When this exercise was carried out in the past, were any of the absences found to be unjustified? I don't think so," he said.