Private hospitals said a nursing shortage has forced them to close beds, including intensive care beds, and postpone major operations. Nurses’ union PASYNO called on the Health Ministry to check whether the beds had in fact been closed. The two sides clashed shortly before parliament’s Health Committee was due to discuss the shortage.
PASYNO also said it had received complaints from members at private hospitals that employers were threatening staff.
Marios Karaiskakis, president of the Pancyprian Association of Private Hospitals (PASIN), told the radio programme ‘Proino Dromologio’ that more than 50 beds had been made unavailable in total. One hospital alone had closed more than 15 because it could not staff them.
He said these were important beds, and that some intensive care beds could not operate because there were not enough nurses. As a result, major operations had been postponed because no intensive care bed was available for patients after surgery. This was affecting how hospitals operate and the quality of care patients receive, he said.
Karaiskakis said private hospitals had been warning about the shortage for years. At a meeting at the Health Ministry last December, it was agreed that a study should measure the problem. PASIN had estimated the shortage at 400 nurses, and the ministry’s study put it at 600. “We know the problem. How we solve it is the issue,” he said, adding that the private sector had proposed a series of solutions.
On the requirement for nurses to speak good Greek, Karaiskakis said nobody disputed it, including private hospitals. However, setting the bar so high that foreign nurses could not reach it in a short time made the problem worse, he said. He added that the debate concerned only 10 per cent of each hospital’s nurses, so there would always be many nurses available whose mother tongue is Greek. He also noted that private hospitals treat a large number of English-speaking patients.
A PASYNO spokesman, speaking after Karaiskakis, said he was stunned by the remarks. He asked why Karaiskakis spoke of a shortage while also saying that many Greek-speaking nurses were available.
“We call on the Health Ministry to go and check whether private hospitals closed beds,” the spokesman said. He also challenged the Health Minister to publish a study, carried out by a professor from Greece, that records the scale of the shortages. He said PASYNO had obtained the study, and that the figures in it confirmed the union’s position.
The spokesman said PASYNO had complaints from members working in private hospitals that their rights were being violated. Members said they were being made to work as cleaners, assistants and porters, and that staff were being threatened with dismissal and with the prospect of the 10 per cent of foreign nurses the hospitals would bring in. He questioned whether the foreign investment funds that have bought the hospitals cared about quality, saying they looked only at revenue and costs.
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