ALMOST HALF the nursing staff at the Bank of Cyprus (BoC) Oncology Centre will leave in April to take up positions in the more lucrative public sector.
The exodus threatens to close one of the two oncology wards – reducing available beds from 32 to 16 – and cut chemotherapy and day care services by a third for the 350 cancer patients who visit the centre on a daily basis.
With the government’s decision not to provide a dedicated cancer ward at the new Nicosia General Hospital, the spotlight has moved to the Oncology Centre, but concerns are reaching fever pitch as to how it can provide much needed services with the threat of nurse shortages looms over its head.
Despite boasting state-of-the-art facilities and infrastructure, the BoC’s oncology centre has traditionally faced understaffing with nurses. Staff salaries, which are paradoxically paid by the state, are not on a par with those offered in the private sector and nurses employed by the government to work in state hospitals enjoy far greater benefits.
Europa Donna and the Association of Cancer Patients and Friends yesterday called on the centre’s founders and sponsors, the government and the BoC Medical Foundation, to finally sit down and find a way to protect the rights of hundreds of cancer patients, by avoiding the mass exodus of nurses to the public sector, which has been pending for months.
The Association’s President Anna Achilleoudi questioned whether the founders had really realised that 29 of the 60 nurses were leaving the centre next month.
Europa Donna President Stella Kyriakidou asked: “What shall we tell the patient who is scheduled to start therapy treatment and will no longer be able to?”
They called a media conference yesterday as a last resort, highlighting that letters had been sent to the ministers of health and finance and the president but nothing had been done to stop the workers from leaving. Achilleoudi said the nurses were justified in seeking equal pay to their colleagues in the public sector.
Now the centre faces the awkward situation where experienced nurses whose salaries are effectively paid by the government will quit their jobs to work in state hospitals, at a time when the government has made the Oncology Centre the focus of the island’s cancer treatment services.
Since the cancer ward at the Nicosia hospital was shut down, only Limassol hospital provides a cancer ward to supplement the cancer services on the island.
Health Minister Andreas Gabrielides yesterday failed to provide any hope that the trained staff would be prevented from leaving or that the resulting gap would be adequately filled.
No pay rise seems on the table, but the ministry has arranged to hire 15 new untrained graduates from Nicosia’s Nursing School. The 29 nurses leaving the centre will be allowed to stay on three to four weeks to train the new recruits while those who leave will be allowed to work at the centre in their free time.
Gabrielides said Cabinet yesterday discussed the possibility of increasing the capacity of the nursing school in the long run. He added that dialogue was underway to transfer control of operations to the oncology centre, including salary payments, after which, the state will purchase services from the centre.
With the government’s much-trumpeted patients’ rights bill coming into force on April 7, Achilleoudi questioned how it could be implemented when basic rights would be violated.
Chief Executive of the Oncology Centre, Alecos Stamatis, said the 15 new staff were fresh graduates who have no prior experiences in oncology and will require two to three months training before they can operate independently either in the day care centre or inpatient ward.
“It will be a big problem if 29 nurses leave because there will be a gap until the new nurses are trained. We requested several months ago for equitable treatment of our own nurses with government nurses. We have had no reply,” said Stamatis.
“The worse case scenario is that we will have to close one of our two wards, and chemotherapy and day care will be reduced by a third. We informed the minister last week on this. We now depend on the government to decide what to do.”
The clinic director said using foreign workers created problems with language and the need to provide a stable staff base, not temporary workers, who will leave after a few years.
“Patients will definitely be affected. Chemotherapy will be delayed. The minister discussed allowing nurses who leave to work privately for the centre, but this will create problems with existing staff.”
“As management we have been sounding the alarm for several months now. It’s like the sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. We have been screaming and shouting and now it’s one minute to midnight. The centre needs staff to work but we can’t maintain staff if we don’t pay them enough,” said Stamatis.
