Yu Se-hsuan (余思璇), a nurse from Yo Min General Hospital in Sanchong (三重), Taipei County, yesterday apologized to a patient’s family and the public after posting a video of herself tormenting an elderly patient on YouTube.
“I am sorry for this. We were only trying to cheer the patient up while he was taking his medication,” Yu said. “We all love him very much and it was just our way of showing our affection.”
Yu made her remarks during a press conference at the hospital yesterday morning.
The video showed Yu and one of her colleagues standing around the bed of an 82-year-old patient surnamed Zuo (左), who is hospitalized with chronic illness.
In the video, Yu films as her co-worker applies medicine to sores on Zuo’s arms, even though Zuo tries to push the camera away several times.
The two nurses giggle at the old man while taunting him, saying “I dare not touch you because you have scabies,” and “I want to steal your cookies.”
The clip made the front page of local newspapers yesterday and received tens of thousands of hits throughout the day.
“I plan to leave the hospital soon, so I shot the video as a memento,” Yu said. “The only thing I did wrong was to post it on the Internet.”
Zuo’s wife, speaking on behalf of her husband, said that Yu’s behavior was “irresponsible,” but said she forgave her.
The hospital’s chief nurse, who identified herself by her surname, Huang (黃), said that Yu had been at the hospital for eight years and planned to quit at the end of the month.
However, her employment was terminated immediately after the video came to light.
Meanwhile, the hospital said it was considering whether to file a lawsuit against Yu and her co-worker over their behavior.
“They should not be allowed to work as nurses,” Huang said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods