A survey of 133 hospitals nationwide found that most of them have a shortage of nurses, with the total shortfall estimated at 7,000 staff members.
The survey, conducted by the National Union of Nurses’ Associations from Monday until Thursday, showed that 90 percent of the polled hospitals said they found it difficult to recruit new nurses, with 56 percent describing the process as being “very difficult.”
The survey results also showed that 7.2 percent of available nursing positions at the hospitals were not filled, union president Lu Mei-hsiu (盧美秀) said.
She said the nation’s shortage of nurses could increase the risks faced by patients.
Lu said her group would present a proposal at its national congress which says member hospitals should base their number of beds on the size of their nursing staff.
Should the plan be implemented, Lu said some hospitals would have to reduce the number of beds they had available to ensure that every patient received proper care.
The union said it was also collaborating with an online manpower agency on a new project to make it easier for nurses to find work or get back into the workforce if they had taken time off.
The new online platform, expected to be finished by the end of this year, would keep nurses informed about new openings at local hospitals and create a database where former nurses who want to return to the profession can indicate their interest.
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