Patients at Karin Grech Rehabilitation Hospital have been bed-bound for over a month due to ongoing industrial action that was set to be escalated on Wednesday when nurses were directed to stop helping carers wash patients.
However, the action was temporarily suspended, for 24 hours, following a late night meeting between the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses and representatives of Steward Health Care, who run the hospital.
The issue revolves around the ratio of carers. The Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses wants more carers employed.
“There is an agreement in principle that we need more carers but Steward and the Health Division are not agreeing on who will pay for them… This is definitely not the public-private partnership that everyone was hoping for but resembles more a public-private tug of war to the detriment of the patients and the staff concerned,” MUMN president Paul Pace said.
But Steward is insisting that Karin Grech Hospital operates with staffing ratios that are in line with both local and international standards. A spokeswoman said an additional 61 carers had been brought in since the start of the public-private partnership in 2016.
“Steward’s position is that staffing ratios are suf-ficient to provide high-level quality care and that the union’s claims, which translate into a requirement for hundreds of additional carers, are clearly not justified from a clinical point of view,” the spokeswoman said.
This is definitely not the public-private partnership everyone was hoping for but resembles more a public-private tug of war
The issue has been dragging on since March when the union ordered industrial action following a court judgment in which a nurse and a nursing aide were found guilty of manslaughter when a dementia patient died after choking while eating chicken in 2012. The patient, who had no supervision at the time, was meant to have a one-to-one carer in attendance.
Mr Pace said that the courts had blamed the nurses rather than the system, which did not provide one-to-one care when it was ordered by professionals. As a result, nurses were facing legal consequences for what was beyond their control.
The industrial action had been suspended after Steward Health Care provided additional carers. However, as the situation went back to square one, action was resumed in November with the union instructing nurses not to move patients who require one-to-one care from their beds on to armchairs. This directive impacted about 70 patients.
Mr Pace said that nurses had been instructed not to move such patients to their armchairs, from where they could roam around and injure themselves. He pointed out that patients were being cared for, fed and also administered physiotherapy.
As nothing changed since then, the union was now stepping up action and nurses were told not to help carers wash all 170 patients, Mr Pace continued.
“Karin Grech is the hospital with the highest number of supervised cases, but patients are not being supervised.
“This means that patients are not getting the benefits of this supervision but nurses are facing the liability. We cannot accept this,” he said.