The MUMN has ordered its nurses to avoid all work linked to robots at Mater Dei Hospital, which, it claims, are dispensing the wrong medicines and turning drug administration into a "nightmare".
The robots, called Mario, started arriving at Mater Dei Hospital in 2019, with the aim of training doctors and nurses before the eventual rollout of the new system across the entire facility by this year.
An accompanying software program, known as Sofia, is meanwhile meant to weed out human error and wastage of medication.
However, the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses on Monday said that the investment was "a complete failure and waste of money".
It ordered its members not to carry out any work or training linked to the robots while giving management until the end of the month to revert to the traditional way of dispensing drugs.
It said in a statement that ward M5 had been chosen in 2019 for a pilot project in the dispensing of medicine.
But the robotic system had made the nurses' work more difficult, as it kept dispensing the wrong medications or wrong dosage.
'Patients could have consumed wrong meds'
"Were it not for the nurses, who repeatedly double and triple checked the drugs procured by such robots, the patients would have consumed the wrong medication.
"Additionally, these electronic machines removed all accessibility for urgent treatment that was prescribed by doctors from time to time."
Nurse borrowing drugs, disposable supplies
The union claimed that at times, these machines stopped functioning, with nurses having to "borrow drugs from adjacent wards".
When MUMN drew the attention of the hospital's management over these issues, it was told that the matter was being seen to.
"For two whole years, nurses and the MUMN have been swindled in a multi-million project that never took off and never provided any reliable service to the patients. It just added more stress and extra workload on nurses striving to give a simple tablet to their patients.
"The equipment, which was meant to make the distribution of medicine easier and error-free, turned out to be the complete opposite... drug administration has become a nightmare for the nurses."
A similar system, known as DENOVA, was launched at Mater Dei for the procurement of disposable supplies.
The system was meant to increase efficiency, but instead, staff was running out of supplies and had to procure them from other wards, it said.
Eight nurses resign, others seek transfer
MUMN claimed that eight nurses at M5 have resigned, while the rest are asking for a transfer.
The union added that it had not been consulted over the introduction of these machines, which have now been installed in other wards, including M6 and Urology 2.
The union is insisting that the machines, which "failed miserably" over two years, should be removed from Mater Dei.
"The politicians who brought such machines are too proud to admit the huge mistake at the expense of taxpayers and to the detriment of patients' wellbeing," it said in a statement.