As Negotiations With Nurses’ Union Underway, Health Ministry Highlights Delays At Mater Dei
As negotiations between the Health Ministry and the Malta Union for Midwives and Nurses are underway, the Ministry has highlighted the grave delays being experienced at Mater Dei Hospital.
This comes 10 days since the start of the strike, with the union deciding to increase directives for health centres and the Gozo hospital following little to no action taken to resolve the issues.
Speaking with Lovin Malta, a representative for the Ministry said that “negotiations between the Ministry for Health and MUMN are still ongoing”.
“The industrial actions called by MUMN at Mater Dei Hospital are impacting a number of areas of healthcare provision including pain management, theatre surgery, orthopedic elective, and trauma surgeries, delays in the emergency department, and bed blocking,” he continued to say.
“This is resulting in patients with planned procedures being sent home, due to the union deciding, on a day-by-day basis, which theatres should function, which operations will take place and which will be cancelled.”
“Furthermore, the transfer of patients needing rehabilitation is also being significantly delayed.”
On 24th March, directives were sent to over 4,000 nurses and midwives throughout Malta and Gozo, mainly issued over the sectorial agreement related to the introduction of the EVS, appraisal reports, and robotic dispensation of medication.
They were issued to each hospital within Malta’s public health sector, including Mater Dei Hospital, Mount Carmel Hospital, Primary Care Department, Karen Grech Hospital, Gozo General Hospital, St Vincenz De Paul, and elderly homes.
With the strike in full effect, patients are now starting to hear about cancelled procedures, as the measures are set to impact the cancellation of lists, outpatients, and performance in casualty.
Meanwhile, these are the demands being made by MUMN:
“MUMN has to register a dispute once again and will not attend any further meetings unless the government through the MFH accepts the following proposals:
- No form of an appraisal report is to be included in the government’s counter-proposal
- The Salary restructuring included in the MUMN proposal has to be included
- There has to be no robotic or EVS (Palm Reader)
- The one-year interval on the 6.6 hrs extra to come into effect from 1st January 2023
- CPD has to be with the €800 bonus as one time only for MUMN to accept the €1165 and a guarantee in writing that other professions will not receive more
- All MUMN proposals such as tax credits on overtime, pension schemes, on-call, meal allowances, etc are to be included in the government’s counter-proposals
- All allowances are to include the nurses and midwives in all grades including Staff Nurses, Midwives, Senior Staff Nurses, and Senior Midwives, and not just from Charge Nurses upwards as is continuously being proposed by the government
Read the full directives here.
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