Plans for second meeting over nurses' shortage

The Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses will be holding a second meeting with the hospital management on Friday in a bid to solve an issue surrounding nurses' shortage at St Luke's Hospital.

During a meeting last Friday the union voiced its concern that although the number of patients in surgical wards had at times increased to 37 from the usual 30, only three or four nurses were on duty.

Surgical wards at St Luke's Hospital were also being used for medical patients since the hospital's medical wards were already choc-a-bloc. Last Friday, Health Minister Louis Deguara explained that patients were being treated in the hospital's surgical and orthopaedic wards to try and eliminate the need to treat patients in beds in corridors.

When contacted, MUMN general secretary Colin Galea said the hospital's management recognised that nurses were tired and agreed to carry out an exercise to see how the situation could be resolved.

Mr Galea said union representatives toured hospital wards on Sunday and noticed that there were still some patients being treated in the corridor in the medical wards but the plan had not yet been extended to the orthopaedic wards. He said the nurses' complement was not being respected in the medical ward.

"We have written to human resources and administration director Mark Scicluna and asked him to take this into consideration during their exercise," he said.

The meeting between the two is scheduled for Friday morning and hospital chief executive officer Kenneth Grech is expected to be present.