Hung Hau-yun (洪浩雲) is one of the most promising and admired chief resident surgeons at National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH), but his recent decision to quit his job and go into private practice as a cosmetic surgeon has caused concern about a brain drain among surgeons.
Hung, 32, is set to leave his position on July 1. Local media reports said he was the first surgeon trained by the hospital to quit as soon as he got his specialist license to go into cosmetic surgery.
In a recent interview, he said his desire for a better quality of life was the main reason for his abrupt career change.
Hung said that although he knows he could regret his decision someday, he has to quit because he is tired of the harsh working conditions.
“After working more than 100 hours a week for five years at a monthly pay that’s highly disproportionate to the workload, I’m really tired,” Hung said.
He also wrote on his Facebook page that while he still feels a sense of achievement when he sees patients recover after surgery, he is fed up with the difficult work environment and increasing medical disputes.
His Facebook post has caught the attention of almost every student at the National Taiwan University’s College of Medicine and has ignited heated discussion among young surgeons on the future of the medical profession.
Many of Hung’s mentors at the college and the hospital have tried to dissuade him from leaving. Having failed, some professors and surgeons now regard him as a dissident, media reports said.
Hospital spokeswoman Tan Ching-Ting (譚慶鼎) said everyone has his or her own life plan, and not every student, intern or resident agrees with Hung’s views.
“We respect his decision and we will carefully review his suggestions and opinions on improving hospital management and working conditions,” Tang said.
Lin Ching-yun (林靜芸), the hospital’s first female surgeon and the former head of a national plastic surgery association, said Hung’s exit signals a brain drain in the surgical profession.
Taiwan has about 44,000 licensed doctors, 12,000 of whom are cosmetic surgeons.
“I’m afraid our health insurance system will eventually drive many qualified doctors to abandon their specialized fields to seek a share of the medical cosmetic market,” Lin said.
Under the hospital’s regulations, Hung could become an attending doctor at the hospital’s Yunlin branch in southern Taiwan this summer and return in two years to the main hospital in Taipei as one of its youngest surgeons.
Lin said plastic surgery and dermatology are the core of medical cosmetology. There are about 1,700 licensed specialists in those fields, but there are more than 12,000 doctors practicing medical cosmetics, she said, adding that many have come from other fields, such as family medicine, internal medicine and ophthalmology.
“The flawed and unreasonable payment regulations under our national health insurance program has distorted our medical service system and prompted many young doctors to give up their specializations and pursue a career in the more lucrative area of cosmetic surgery,” Lin said.
She said if the government fails to pay attention to the serious brain drain in general surgery, patients will soon have a hard time finding qualified surgeons.
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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