An 80-year-old patient at Karin Grech Rehabilitation Hospital has not been able to go for her daily walk with visiting relatives for almost two weeks due to ongoing industrial action that is leaving some patients bedbound.
“It’s been 10 days and my aunt has been in bed most of the time. I or other relatives visit her daily and we usually take her for a walk. But we haven’t been able to do this. This is not right. Patients have no voice,” one concerned relative told Times of Malta.
The man, who preferred not to be named, said that patients were only being taken out of bed to go to the toilet and for physio-therapy. The rest of the time they were in bed, to the detriment of their wellbeing, and risking bedsores.
The issue revolves around the ratio of carers. The Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses is asking Steward Health Care, the US company that runs the hospital, to employ more carers.
Two weeks ago the union ordered industrial action at Karin Grech Hospital – instructing nurses not to move patients who require one-to-one care from their beds onto armchairs.
The action, that impacts some 70 patients, followed a court judgment in which a nurse and a nursing aide were found guilty of manslaughter when a dementia patient died after chewing on chicken without supervision in 2012.
The patient was meant to have a one-to-one carer but did not.
MUMN president Paul Pace said that the courts had blamed the nurses rather than the system – that 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.
This is why, he explained, nurses had been instructed not to move such patients to their armchairs, from where they could roam around and injure themselves. He stressed that patients were being cared for, fed and administered physiotherapy.
Mr Pace said that industrial action was ordered in March, soon after the court judgment, but suspended after Steward Health Care provided additional carers. But, as the situation went back to square one, action was resumed.
The union and Steward Health Care have exchanged proposals and counterproposals and should be meeting this week to discuss a way forward. A spokeswoman for Steward Health Care confirmed this and said they were willing to “compromise on the ratio of carers”.