New Taipei City’s (新北市) Labor Affairs Department on Tuesday announced new regulations to address the problem of excessive working hours for nurses.
Nursing staff in hospitals across the city will not be allowed to work more than 10 hours per day under the new regulations, which will go into effect in June next year. Total on-duty work hours will be no longer than 230 hours per month, the department said.
The news came after the department held a forum the previous day. Hospital executives attended the forum to discuss working hours with representatives from nursing groups.
One conclusion that came out of the meeting was that nurses’ on-call hours would be included in the limit. The time nurses have to wait on call is currently not counted, which is not fair considering their workload, Taiwan Nurses’ Rights Promotion Association chairwoman Jane Lu (盧孳艷) said.
Lu also said some nurses were not able to take a 30-minute break after working four hours, as required by labor laws.
In Taiwan, nurses are required to put in two to four hours of overtime daily, without pay, which is not the case in other countries, the National Union of Nurses Association said.
Regulating total working hours is more important than capping daily hours because most nurses prefer to work four days a week, depending on the hospital’s shift system, New Taipei City Nurses Association president Chen Li-shuei (陳麗雪) said.
The department said at the end of the meeting that nurses in the city will not be allowed to work longer than 10 consecutive hours starting on June 1 next year. In urgent circumstances, regular and extended working hours cannot exceed 12 hours per day.
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