Karin Grech Rehabilitation Hospital now has a shortage of 50 nurses, following a number of resignations over the past two weeks, the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses said in a statement on Wednesday.
14 nurses resigned from the hospital in the past two weeks, and the MUMN said that if it had permitted the health division to issue the call to “poach nurses from the private sector into the public sector, the situation would have been catastrophic.”
The MUMN said that because of this shortage, out of 270 beds at Karin Grech Hospital, only around 140 beds are actually being used.
The union said that the shortage of nurses is compounded further by the fact that carers, an essential part of nurses’ supporting staff and supplied through a private contractor, are resigning and moving to the UK in their droves.
“It is an open secret that Malta is being used as a stepping stone for nurses and carers who spend two years in Malta and then, after gaining experience and knowledge, move to the UK which offers much better salaries,” the union said.
This is also happening at Mater Dei Hospital, where an average of three nurses per week are resigning and moving to the UK, the MUMN said.
The union said that the Health Minister is “more concentrated on the election campaign than on the crisis facing each and every hospital in Malta” and that the Permanent Secretary, whose resignation the union has called for, has “already proven that his only concern are industrial disputes” and who never tried to seek solutions for the nursing crisis.
The MUMN said that its repeated efforts to open talks for a new sectorial agreement so as to stop so many nurses resigning is “not even being considered by both the health minister and permanent secretary”, and that their only ‘solution’ was to poach nurses from the private sector.
“While all EU countries embarked on addressing their nursing shortage by providing much better working conditions and increased salaries, the Health Ministry’s main concern is only the coming General Election,” the union concluded.