A simple communication tool invented by the Buddhist Tzu-chi General Hospital in Hualien has helped Aboriginal patients, many of whom do not speak Mandarin, to communicate more effectively with hospital staff.
The innovation was highlighted at the annual Taiwan Forum on Quality Improvement in Health Care yesterday in Taipei.
Staff in the hospital's intensive care unit merged graphics and phrases in a romanized form of the Amis and Truku aboriginal tribal languages on cards to facilitate communication between staff and patients.
According to deputy head nurse of the unit Chin Hsueh-chen(金雪珍 ), about half of the patients at the hospital are Aboriginal, with Amis and Truku forming the majority.
Most have difficulty communicating with hospital staff due to the language barrier, she said, adding that only two out of thirty nurses in the unit speak the tribes' languages.
To resolve the situation, Chin said a questionnaire was issued to patients' family and medical staff who speak the languages to collect a list of useful words. Once this had been done hospital staff, patients' families and priests from nearby churches helped to transcribe the words into romanized versions.
The vocabulary includes words related to patients' physical needs such as drinking water and medical treatments such as injections.
In addition to language teaching sessions, staff have been required to memorize one word a day both in Amis and Truku, up to a total of 25. In order to help them learn the vocabulary, Chin said she even marked Zhuyin next to the words in daily e-mails to her fellow colleagues.
Chin said that the combination of graphics and words mean that patients and staff can communicate with each other more effectively.
The unit has been promoting the usage of the communication cards since Nov. 2004, she said.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai