Health ministry, nurses’ union announce pre hospital emergency care measures

Health Minister Joe Cassar, MUMN’s Paul Pace reveal pre hospital care plans, effectively integrating and enhancing pre-hospital care workers’ duties while safeguarding both the patient and worker

Nurses will soon be administering certain medications to patients themselves while travelling in an ambulance
Nurses will soon be administering certain medications to patients themselves while travelling in an ambulance

Health Minister Joe Cassar and Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses president Paul Pace announced pre hospital care plans concerning pre hospital emergency care workers to help drastically improve "the onward management of the sick and injured while being transported to hospital".

Plans to increase the emergency department's nursing complement are also in the pipeline.

The new measures in the pre hospital emergency care are a first for Malta whereby nurses and midwives will be given the green light, according to law, to administer certain medications (without the need of a doctor's prescription) to patients who require urgent medication while being transported by ground, air and sea ambulance before being hospitalised. 

Cassar said: "Pre hospital care plays a vital part in our emergency services sector, and which deals with the most crucial of stages involving patients. Through this agreement, we have reached a breakthrough agreement with regard to health services offered."

Cassar added that discussions between stakeholders to determine what medicines could in fact be administered by nurses in pre hospital care were in the process.

Other plans include issuing a call for applications for  practise and development' - a new job description - while also enhancing emergency personnel through another call for applications for nursing staff within the emergency department. Cassar urged students graduating next year in nursing care to apply for such posts.

"This is being done to enhance the number of nurses present in the emergency department, which include pre care emergency personnel in terms of response in an emergency situation, and to help improve our general emergency services system in our hospitals," Cassar said.

Meanwhile, the union's president, Paul Pace, said that the aim of the agreement was to safeguard both the quality of the emergency services while strengthening the ambulance sector, and to make sure that ambulance staff have the adequate insurance cover as well.

"This is the first time training on how and what medicines ambulance nurses administer is being given. A first-aid course and an ambulance special license for drivers will also be issued accordingly while plans to insure both air and sea ambulance staff were in the pipeline aswell," Pace said.

Pace pointed out that currently, ground ambulance drivers were adequately insured.

The union's president added that "together with the ministry we have empowered nurses with the aim of improving the emergency service for the public".

Last month, the MUMN issued a directive to nurses not to use hired ambulances citing health and safety concerns.

When asked if the ambulances currently being used were safe, Cassar said that "our ambulance fleet will be strengthened through a call for tenders issued recently, the number of ambulances of which will increase by December. He also emphasised that "all the ambulances currently being used are EC compliant".

Asked why such measures, such as the pre hospital care measures, were taken at this particular point in time, Cassar said that this particular unit within the emergency services played a vital role in the health services sector and certain measures needed to be addressed to safeguard both the patients and emergency service workers.

avatar
Oh, tickle the other one Cassar please! Why, but why, does this happen repeatedly in Malta. All quiet on the western front for 4.5 years, then all hell breaks lose in the last 6 months. Appeasement all round, just to appear to be productive, and at the same time spreading goodwill and spending vast amounts of unavailable cash, only to be left behind for successors to pay, and unravel the hasty decisions that would have been taken definitely not with the nation's best interests in mind in the last 6 months before the forthcoming general elections.