Be the first to comment!Constant watch treatment for critical patients not provided due to lack of funds – MUMN
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The constant watch treatment to critical patients ordered by doctors is not being delivered in Mater Dei Hospital due to lack of funds, the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses said today.
“With all the boosting of investing heavily in Health Care by the Minister of Finance, crucial services needed for critical ill patients’ care are not being delivered in Mater Dei Hospital due to the fact that no funds are available,” the Union said.
It added, “doctors regularly prescribe that certain patients require a constant watch surveillance by a carer. since such patients are critically ill or suffer from dementia and could harm themselves, escape from hospital or become fatally ill. Since no funds are available, the management of Mater Dei Hospital is not hiring the necessary compliment of carers.”
The Union pointed out that “if such patients would manage to escape from hospital or even commit suicide, the nurses on that particular ward will face criminal charges and can be charged for involuntarily homicide.”
“This is totally unfair on the nurses and midwives working in MDH, since such surveillance require extra staff than the normal ward compliment which the management of Mater Dei Hospital is not supplying.”
“This ongoing problem is not being addressed due to financial problems that Mater Dei Hospital has been facing these last years,” the MUMN said. “Also there is huge mismanagement of carers currently occurring since some carers are allocated in overstaffed units.”
MUMN said that it “is informing all Magistrates and all Police Inspectors, that when (and not if) they are summoned to investigate the escape of a patient from Mater Dei Hospital, or the suicide of a patient, they should keep in their mind that the added staff which the management of Mater Dei Hospital had agreed to increase to the ward compliment has never materialised.”
“The nurses and midwives on the wards are not to blame but it is the management of MDH which should be investigated,” the Union stated.
“Also the general public should be informed that if a civil suite is to be initiated in such cases, it is the hospital authority that should be taken to court and not the nurses or midwives on that particular ward,” the MUMN concluded.
