Nurses’ union demands investigation into political use of incident reports

The president of the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses has written to the permanent secretary at the Health Department, requesting an internal investigation into the leaks of nurses' incident reports to political parties.

MUMN president Paul Pace said certain incident reports being written up by nurses had appeared in newspapers in full breach of the regulations of the data protection act which the department was supposed to upkeep.

Pace referred to a recent episode inside the elderly ward in Mt Carmel Hospital, whose incident report appeared in the Nationalist organ Il-Mument "word-for-word", and then broadcast on Net TV in its evening bulletin.

Pace said this was unacceptable to the union. "It clearly demonstrates that someone within the Health Department has a direct link with a political party, and when certain people are involved such incidents are being handed over to certain media for political propaganda purposes."

Pace said the same had happened when a nurse had written an incident report alleging having been kicked by Labour MP and consultant surgeon Anthony Zammit.

Pace said the MUMN is requesting a board of investigation be set up within the next 24 hours, "to expose the person who is passing over such incident reports to the Nationalist Party."

Pace threatened industrial action unless the person responsible is not identified within the next 72 hours.

"Such directives will allow every nurse and midwife the right to refuse writing any incident report in the future even when requested by the nursing management or the Health Department. Unless such mole is thoroughly exposed, your office and any hospital management are not in a position to request any future incident reports."