The Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses has issued two industrial directives to come into immediate effect ordering MUMN members not to accompany aggressive patients if they are not escorted by private security personnel. Another directive is that aggressive patients must not be allowed out of single rooms which they will be recovering in unless there are two private security personnel in the ward itself.
The action was taken following a number of requests made by the MUMN to the management of Mount Carmel Hospital to safeguard the safety and security of nurses at work, which the union said fell on deaf ears, and of specific incidents in the recent days,
On Thursday 21 January at 3:30pm, the MUMN said a nurse was accompanying a patient from Mount Carmel Hospital to the Emergency Department at Mater Dei. She was physically beaten so harshly that the nurse herself was treated at the hospital. Security Officers at Mater Dei not only refrained from offering any help; they actually left the nurse with the patient as soon as they saw the incident, the union said. Police present in the department took a long time to intervene because there was no female officer stationed in the department. The Security Response Team of the hospital was also called, but none of them showed up and this all resulted in a nurse who was so hurt both physically and psychologically that she now refuses to work at Mount Carmel Hospital ever again.
Another incident which happened on Tuesday 26 January 2016 resulted in another nurse who was beaten up by a patient who was in recovery in the Female 1 ward. These incidents are so frequent that the MUMN, a number of weeks ago, asked for an increase in private security personnel in the hospital.
The MUMN also appealed to the concerned authorities to facilitate the process of transferring the nurse who was assaulted in front of the Emergency Department to another hospital as soon as possible.
from The Malta Independent http://ift.tt/1SJBUqd
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment