Department of Health Minister Chiu Wen-ta (邱文達) yesterday vowed to look into possible measures to address a staff shortage that has plagued several major hospitals and medical centers nationwide.
During a Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee meeting at the legislature, lawmakers expressed concerns at the findings of the Council of Labor Affairs and the Taiwan Healthcare Reform Foundation, after they uncovered what were described as rampant labor violations at some of the country’s most reputable hospitals and medical centers.
Problems associated with excessive overtime and a shortage of medical personnel had become so severe that the quality of medical care provided to patients could be suffering, they said.
Lawmakers said they were concerned by a finding that pharmacists, such as those at Taipei Veterans General Hospital, must process one prescription every 4.8 minutes, which was 2.5 times faster than in Japan, therefore -increasing the likelihood of human error because of a lack of time.
Nursing staff, including those at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital’s Linkou Branch, were also seriously overworked and nurses have to tend to as many as eight patients at once, the findings showed.
Chiu said the department had recently held meetings with academics and representatives from regional hospitals, medical centers, medical universities and nurses associations to discuss ways to deal with the problem of staff shortages.
During the meetings, the representatives reached a consensus to revise hospital standards to adjust the ratio of nursing staff from the current four beds per nurse to three beds per nurse, Chiu said.
The measure is expected to become effective as early as the end of this year, he said.
As for the shortage of pharmacists, the department said it would meet representatives to discuss the matter as soon as possible to ensure prescriptions are accurate.
Data from council’s inspections showed that excessive overtime had increased from 5.6 percent last year to 8 percent this year.
Of the 50 regional hospitals and medical centers inspected by the council, 16 had committed 30 labor violations. Of these, 19 involved working hours, while six involved not implementing a requirement that employees have at least one day off per week.
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:
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