The Health Reform Foundation and nine civil rights groups yesterday urged the Department of Health to present research showing that proposed amendments to hospital staffing standards were designed to ensure patient safety.
If the department is unable to meet this demand within a short period of time, it should present a timetable for when it would be able to present the research, the foundation's chief executive officer, Liu Mei-chun (
According to Chen Ya-ching (
Chang Li-yun (張笠雲), chairwoman of the foundation, said that human resources were essential and fundamental to maintaining patient care.
The foundation presented overseas research statistics showing that having more medical staff may help reduce urinary-tract infection by 25 percent, upper intestinal and stomach hemorrhage by 17 percent, in-hospital pneumonia infection by 17 percent and heart failure by 13 percent.
Taiwan, however, has no corresponding research demonstrating that the local hospital evaluation system helps reduce health risks in hospitals.
Shu Ching-hsien (舒靜嫻), deputy executive officer of the Sunshine Social Welfare Foundation, a support group for burn victims, said hospitals are usually short of nurses or therapists to take care of burn patients.
She added that hospitals usually do not give weight to burn centers because they are not profitable centers.
"If we lower the standards of hospital staffing, can hospitals still cater to patients' needs? We doubt it," Shu said.
Consumers' Foundation deputy secretary-general Yu Kai-hsiung (游開雄) said up to 80 percent of the medical disputes that the foundation dealt with between 2002 and last year were related to a shortage of medical personnel in hospitals.
The shortage of medical professionals was a violation of international medical human rights protocols, said Taiwan Association for Human Rights secretary general Dana Wu (
Wu added that the protocols seek to guarantee the patient's right to know and access to medical information, as well as participating in the decision-making process related to his or her personal health.
At the health department, Bureau of Medical Affairs chief director Hsueh Jui-yuan (
Hsueh added that although there was no explicit requirement for staff numbers listed in the evaluation system, hospitals would still be reviewed based on how they perform in this area.
Hsueh said the department would review the hospital evaluation mechanism at the end of October and may consider reintroducing the minimum human resource requirement into the standards to allay public concerns.
The amendments to the standards are expected to take effect next year, he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching