Nurses request parties to reduce patients’ suffering during elections

The Malta Union Midwives and Nurses has called for a meeting with the Electoral Commission and the Labour and Nationalist parties to revise the electoral process and address the transport of patients during elections.

said its members had followed directives it issued during the divorce referendum not to attend to any meetings, handle voting documents, or do any paperwork related to the electoral process for any type of election.

But the union said the discomfort and the pain caused to patients who had to be taken to the polling place to vote still occurred. “Even in 2011, patients in Mater Dei Hospital, Mt. Carmel Hospital, Boffa Hospital, General Hospital in Gozo and Karen Grech Hospital, who expressed the wish to vote, had to be taken to the polling stations on stretchers with oxygen cylinders and various tubes attached to their body,” union president Paul Pace said.

“This is not only humiliating for our patients but also causes great risk, pain, discomfort and stress for the patients who wanted to vote,” Pace said.

Although MUMN has written several times to the political parties who form part of the electoral commission to adopt a process where the ballot boxes are taken to hospitals, Pace said both parties have been “insensitive” to patients’ pain and discomfort.

“We did not receive any support from the Health Division or ministry on such an important aspect that affects patients hospitalised in the government institutions,” Pace said. “MUMN is not just the voice of the nurses and midwives but also the voice of the patients.”