By Charlie Charalambous
FOUR children awaiting surgery at Nicosia’s Makarios Hospital must now return to the waiting list after nurses walked out of the operating theatre to take a lunch break.
The hospital’s chief paediatric surgeon, Eleni Theocharous, yesterday called for a disciplinary inquiry against the nurses involved and threatened to resign over the issue. Following the outcry, Health Minister Christos Solomis ordered a top priority investigation into the fiasco.
On Thursday, scheduled operations were disrupted at the children’s hospital when nurses left the theatre at 1.30pm, saying their allotted time was up and refusing to wheel in the next patient.
A fifth child was apparently left in limbo after he had been partly sedated. His operation had to be delayed until late afternoon, while the other four children were sent home.
“If there are scheduled operations and the surgeon has access to the operating theatre until 3pm, the unions cannot then decide to inform staff to leave with everything having to stop,” Theocharous said yesterday.
She described the staff action as unethical and totally incomprehensible under the mandate of the health service.
“There should be a disciplinary inquiry as four children were denied the required surgery.”
Theocharous said that two of the children needed urgent operations, while another had waited six months for the operation so that she would not interrupt her schooling.
Frustrated and angry parents were also left in the dark as to when their children would undergo the operations. “I couldn’t say when there would be available time for surgery, I don’t even know if I can continue under such conditions,” Theocharous said. “I can’t hide the fact that my intention is to quit, because this type of thing should not be allowed to happen.”
The chief surgeon also took a pot-shot at what she described as the “me- first” mentality of union time-keepers. “It’s unacceptable in the health service, but only in Cyprus does this kind of incident occur.”
Civil servants union Pasydy, in a statement released later in the day, defended nurses at the hospital, saying they had been faced with an “impossible workload”. Pasysdy said that too many (nine) routine operations had been scheduled for Tuesday and the situation was made worse by four emergency surgery cases.
Pasydy also accued Theocharous of “unacceptable behaviour” and inflexibility. The union said nurses were considering refusing to work under her in future.
