Hospital management will be taking full responsibilities for consultants to sign covering letters for medicines and will be taking disciplinary action against any consultant who fails to fill the covering letter with the result that the patient will miss any treatment, the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses said this morning.
Recently MUMN took an official stand on the red tape and increased paperwork which nurses have to pass through in order to get the tablets from pharmacy to be given to the patients. MUMN's stand was that the treatment to patients will be affected if the pharmacist fails to give the necessary drugs to the ward due to the doctors' responsibility of not filling the covering letter.
The fact that MAM opened a judicial protest did not even waiver or affect MUMN's stand in favour of its 3,000 members its represents and such a stand was maintained unequivocally.
Covering letters are the responsibility of the consultants whom some of them, for a reason or other, do not fill these letters in time with the result that nurses and midwives end up chasing the same consultants to procure the necessary tablets for the patients. This chasing has to stop.
After a series of discussions with the Health Department, it was agreed that whenever a consultant fails to fill any covering letter, any nurse is to inform the management of one's respective hospital. The management will be taking full responsibilities for consultants to sign the covering letters and will be taking disciplinary actions on any consultant who fails to fill the covering letter with the result that the patient will miss any treatment.
MUMN is informed in writing that the management would take responsibility for any treatment not given due to the failure of the consultant not filling the covering letter.
Such agreement suited MUMN since all responsibility and all chasing is now transferred to the management by one phone call. This is the only hospital in Europe to have a hospital management accepting to chase consultants instead of having a pharmacist stocking the wards which is the normal practice in all hospitals.
MUMN thanked the Health Minister Dr. Konrad Mizzi on such an agreement.