The silent suffering of Mater Dei's overcrowding

I write here not as president of the nurses and midwives union, but as an advocate for the patients who have expressed their personal ordeal of being medically treated on stretchers in corridors with minimal resources in Mater Dei Hospital.

Unfortunately every issue in this blessed country must carry some political perspective, with politicians of both parties politicizing even human suffering. But this only deviates the true meaning and value of human suffering.

One of the patients, a 75-year-old lady, was admitted to Mater Dei Hospital as her heart started to give way, causing water to accumulate in the lungs, and in turn breathlessness. She was admitted and cared for in one of the newly-added wards: a ward being hosted inside a corridor in Mater Dei Hospital, a corridor which was given a “name” in the belief that it would give the impression to the general public that it is indeed a ward. 

Although Mater Dei personnel go out of their way to provide excellent care, at times under management-by-crisis, patients of Mater Dei suffer in silence.

At night, the lighting of a corridor cannot be switched off. Imagine all the patients trying to get some sleep in a fully-lit corridor. There is no bed table, exits so when dinner was provided, the patient ate her meal with the tray of food on her lap. And being old and breathless, food spillage was all over her bed-sheets, the same ones she had to use for the night. Her clothes were on the floor under her stretcher. So was the water and tumbler which her relatives brought her. But both are not accessible to her since the stretcher is too high for her to lean over to get some water.

Her privacy and dignity were impossible to maintain. No curtains and no adequate screens exist, so when the nurses or the doctors needed to provide nursing or medical care, dignity and privacy left much to be desired. The fact that she was in fact a nun, meant that she was shocked at having to see exposed men next to her stretcher. I could understand her anxiety, since not all people are the same and their level of morality is different from person to person.

But I can also understand the ordeal my nursing colleagues endure, being unable to provide privacy and dignity to their patients.

Due to the patient’s accumulation of water in her lungs and feet, she was given drugs which make her urinate more often than usual. To make matters worse, a possible side-effect of the drugs used to treat her condition was the sharp drop in blood pressure. There was only one toilet, for 30 patients, being more that 50 metres away from her bed. Imagine this old lady, suffering with water in her lungs walking 50m: she fainted twice and fell to the floor on both occasions, having to be carried back by the nurses to her stretcher.

The corridor was cold, and had no oxygen facilities. So nurses were instructed to bring over the old, huge oxygen cylinders. Due to occupational health and safety issues, these cylinders were supposed to have been abolished years ago. But this lady had one of these cylinders: regretfully, the oxygen had not been humidified, making her more ill. She ended up without a voice, hindering her effective communication with nurses, carers and family.

In these corridors, the nurse assistance alarm system is inexistent, so it is difficult for patients to call for assistance. Now voiceless, and without a nurse assistance alarm, and being administered diuretics, this patient’s situation worsened as she ended up urinating in bed.

This was no easy situation for both patient and nurses. With just two nurses admitting new patients in from casualty, the patient was being nursed on soiled linen for long time. Her home-setting had provided her with impeccable personal hygiene: now this traumatic experience was even harder to bear. She fell twice from her stretcher, and old-age and not being used to staying in a stretcher for such a long time, disoriented her, caused her severe back pains. She was just hoping to die.

It goes without saying. Her conditioned worsened. And although Mater Dei personnel go out of their way to provide excellent care, at times under management-by-crisis, patients of Mater Dei suffer in silence. This is not an experience of one patient but an ordeal Maltese patients pass through when admitted here.

Politicians of both parties boast about the numbers in health – number of operations, number of  admissions… – but such suffering is not measured or gauged in figures. It is time silent suffering be addressed once and for all.