Union insists on more nurses to meet demand

The Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses has called on the management of St Luke's Hospital to raise the number of nurses to meet the increased workload caused by a recent influx of patients.

The union yesterday wrote to the hospital's CEO, Kenneth Grech, calling for an urgent meeting and warning that unless an appointment was set by Friday it would register an industrial dispute.

In its letter the union said it agreed that no one needing hospital treatment could be turned away once Malta only had one general hospital. It also agreed that in order to ease overcrowding, patients were transferred to other wards, such as the surgical wards.

However in such an "alarming" situation it could not understand how the management was restricting the number of nurses to the agreed complement. Once the number of patients increased, the number of nurses needed to be raised proportionately, the union said.