About 10 percent of the nation’s emergency room (ER) doctors leave their profession 10 years into their practice, causing a serious manpower shortage, according to a study published at a medical conference yesterday.
ER doctors give up their practice for many reasons, including the flawed payment system under the national health insurance system and having to work in a perennially high-stress environment, said Lee Yi-kung (李宜恭), chief of the Emergency Department at Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital in Chiayi’s Dalin Township (大林).
“We found that ER doctors quit their practice more often than hospital-based doctors specializing in other fields,” Lee said at this year’s Annual Conference of the Taiwan Society of Emergency Medicine.
Lee and his team surveyed 1,721 registered ER doctors nationwide and followed their careers from 1997 to 2010. They found that during the 13 years, 10 percent of the doctors have either retired or changed their specialty.
The turnover was higher than that of doctors with other hospital-based specialties, like radiology, pathology and anesthesiology.
“The study results yield several implications,” Lee said, urging health authorities to pay attention to the brain drain situation in emergency rooms.
With 1,100 ER doctors taking care of 6 million patients per year, Lee said that an increasing workload resulting from the brain drain could drive even more doctors away.
The present ER doctor-patient ratio is already short of the 1:5,000 standard set by the Department of Health, he added.
“Being an ER doctor is a profession that requires accumulation of experience,” he said.
Unfortunately, the national health insurance system, which covers 99 percent of the population, does not recognize that, Lee added. ER doctors, for example, are only paid NT$400 (US$13) for conducting an intubation, a process that is done under high stress and requires intense concentration, he said.
The two-day conference, themed Refining Emergency Medicine Specialty through Excelling Medical Education, attracted physicians from China, Hong Kong and Canada.
Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) was sentenced to six months in prison, commutable to a fine, by the New Taipei District Court today for contravening the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) in a case linked to an alleged draft-dodging scheme. Wang allegedly paid NT$3.6 million (US$114,380) to an illegal group to help him evade mandatory military service through falsified medical documents, prosecutors said. He transferred the funds to Chen Chih-ming (陳志明), the alleged mastermind of a draft-evasion ring, although he lost contact with him as he was already in detention on fraud charges, they said. Chen is accused of helping a
UNREASONABLE SURVEILLANCE: A camera targeted on an road by a neighbor captured a man’s habitual unsignaled turn into home, netting him dozens of tickets The Taichung High Administrative Court has canceled all 45 tickets given to a man for failing to use a turn signal while driving, as it considered long-term surveillance of his privacy more problematic than the traffic violations. The man, surnamed Tseng (曾), lives in Changhua County and was reported 45 times within a month for failing to signal while driving when he turned into the alley where his residence is. The reports were filed by his neighbor, who set up security cameras that constantly monitored not only the alley but also the door and yard of Tseng’s house. The surveillance occurred from July
SECURITY: Starlink owner Elon Musk has taken pro-Beijing positions, and allowing pro-China companies to control Taiwan’s critical infrastructure is risky, a legislator said Starlink was reluctant to offer services in Taiwan because of the nation’s extremely high penetration rates in 4G and 5G services, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said yesterday. The ministry made the comments at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, which reviewed amendments to Article 36 of the Telecommunications Management Act (電信管理法). Article 36 bans foreigners from holding more than 49 percent of shares in public telecommunications networks, while shares foreigners directly and indirectly hold are also capped at 60 percent of the total, unless specified otherwise by law. The amendments, sponsored by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ko
A Japan Self-Defense Forces vessel entered the Taiwan Strait yesterday, Japanese media reported. After passing through the Taiwan Strait, the Ikazuchi was to proceed to the South China Sea to take part in a joint military exercise with the US and the Philippines, the reports said. Japan Self-Defense Force vessels were first reported to have passed through the strait in September, 2024, with two further transits taking place in February and June last year, the Asahi Shimbun reported. Yesterday’s transit also marked the first time since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi took office that a Japanese warship has been sent through the Taiwan
RSS