The Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses has called for vaccination appointments to be more spread out after crowding and queueing was seen outside health centre on Friday, threatening industrial action if changes are not made to the current system.
The union expressed its disappointment that their claims made regarding the lack of organization of the Covid Vaccination programme were totally ignored by the Primary Health Care CEO by claiming that all the nurse’s issues are unfounded.
In the statement, MUMN President Paul Pace said that he had been labelled as “destructive” and that it was said that the MUMN as a union should not get itself involved in the “nitty and gritty”. “This shows the PHC CEO had no intention of hearing the issues of her nurses let along addressing them”, the statement read.
On the basis of what happened yesterday, MUMN said that its claims made in the name of its members were highly justifiable and it was clear that Primary Health Care management has failed even on the basics of organizing a proper vaccination strategy.
“Nurses and other elderly people were put at risk due to the lack of insight and lack of management from PHC”, they said.
In fact, PHC was just looking at numbers without going into the logistics of each and every Health Centre, the union added.
“Having angry clients putting pressures on the nursing when such vaccine needs to be prepared in a quiet calm atmosphere shows how detached PHC management is from the clinical aspect. Not to mention that elderly people were left in the rain, crowded together with no ways to maintain social distance shows again another failure of PHC”, the union continued.
The union said that it will be declaring an industrial dispute if several conditions are not met immediately.
They called for added security guards at each health centre during vaccination time, and for all vaccination lists given to Health Centre to have been verified by Primary Care by phoning all patients to check if they are alive, willing to come and to inform them to adhere to their time slot.
They said that time intervals have to be more spread out than the current slot of five patients every 15 minutes.
“When MUMN pointed out that appointments are too close, the CEO who has no experience in patient care dismissed such issue”, they said, noting however that their claims turned out to be correct as the cold weather had seen multiple layers of clothing need to be removed, meaning that five minutes per patient is not a sufficient time.
Certain Health Centres have added issues of accessibility which again the union said the PHC has totally ignored.
“Therefore, MUMN is requesting that time slots should increase by 30 minutes so that nurses could prepare the clients for vaccination”, the union said.
The union said that if such claims are ignored, the MUMN will be “safeguarding the health and safety of its members by other ways within the law.”
“It is clear that Primary Health Care Management failed to address these issues due to a CEO who would not even consider consultation prior starting the vaccination programme”, they said.
The union said that it will be meeting nurses working at the Primary Health Care to check for anymore difficulties being faced, “since it is clear that the issues of the nurses have always been ignored by Primary Health Care Management.”