Beyond the rhetoric, beyond the tit for tat and beyond all other interests at play, it is the well being of the patient that must come first and foremost, at all times, and that includes the current dispute between the nurses’ union and the government.

The Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses is quite correct in its demands, such as those calling for the recruitment of more nursing staff so as to alleviate the burden of nurses who are reportedly working an 80-hour week; for security; for a second power generator at a psychiatric hospital to supplement the only backup generator which only covers part of the hospital in the event of a power cut; and drug addicts being housed together with psychiatric patients.

These are issues that directly affect the working conditions of the country’s nurses, people that each and every one of us depends upon at some point, if not at many points in our lives, when we are at our most frail and susceptible. These are also some of the challenging issues they have been coping with for a considerable amount of time. The generator in question has been broken for the last 15 to 20 years, and the endemic shortage of nurses has been a burden on the profession for years now.

There is no excusing such pathetic situations and the state of affairs, which, over and above their effect on nurses and their good work, has a very serious knockdown effect on the patients themselves and the overall healing process that the public health system is meant to provide.

But the nurses union itself, through the more deplorable aspects of the directives it issued recently, risks even more seriously endangering the patients’ very lives – that is if nurses would actually be willing to abandon their professional ethics and follow the directives to the letter.

It is wholly abominable how a nurses’ union could have the front to issue a directive for nurses not to give CPR in the event of a power cut at the psychiatric hospital. It is utterly irresponsible for nurses to be ordered to walk out of a psychiatric ward in the event of a blackout irrespective of the hardships nurses experience under such conditions.

Such actions would be far more reprehensible than the government’s already unfathomable unwillingness to supply the hospital with a second generator and proper security. Yes, the government is culpable for the state of affairs that has led to the current standoff, but no amount of argumentation could possibly justify the non-performance of CPR on a dying patient… under any conditions. God forbid that directive is followed even once. That nurse would certainly face criminal charges. Such an individual, nurse or not, who would turn his back on a dying person would not deserve the title of ‘human’ let alone that of ‘nurse’.

What is unfathomable is how a nurses’ union could even consider such a directive, let alone issue it to its members. In this respect, the union has acted as shamefully as the government has by not seeing to the system’s shortcomings.

The main sticking point, according to the MUMN president, is the shortage of nurses and the union is absolutely right to demand action and to protest inaction in this respect. This shortage has been present for years now and it is inexcusable that it has not yet been addressed. Somewhere, somehow a human resources manager’s head needs to roll. Other heads will also need to roll, but that seldom happens in this country where accountability is an abstract term.

The issue, the MUMN president insists in an article in today’s issue, is not one of money but one of staffing.

With or without the industrial action called by the union, the government simply must address the shortage of nurses for the benefit of the nurses themselves and of the patients. This needs to be done from two angles – a stopgap measure to fill that gaping employment void, and by encouraging competent people to take up nursing studies.

The latter has been done before with the raising of stipend levels for engineering and science students and by a great deal of government rhetoric about the job opportunities being created in those sectors. But, quite to the contrary, there are current job opportunities in nursing that simply must be taken up. Perhaps the government should spare some rhetoric advocating the nobility of the nursing profession, and encourage students to enter the field that so desperately needs them.

The Mater Dei Hospital is state of the art but the running of the public health system is far from state of the art and the interests of patients are not being put first and foremost on the agenda.

The situation, in all its facets, will remain a stain on the government’s as well as on the union’s reputation for years to come.