Nursing staff rate their job satisfaction at an average 61 points and said they would like a starting salary of more than NT$48,000 per month, according to the results of a survey released yesterday.
The survey, jointly conducted by the online 1111 Job Bank and the National Union of Nurses’ Associations, said nurses complain most about their workloads, job responsibilities and low pay.
According to the survey, which polled more than 1,000 nurses and more than 400 non-working nurses earlier this month, they only expected to earn an annual income of up to NT$658,600 on average in their first and second years of work.
The Department of Health has initiated a set of guidelines for nursing reforms in the wake of a posting in April by a nurse on CNN iReport, the news network’s Web site for user-generated content, describing how Taiwanese nurses are overworked.
The job bank said it has helped 2,670 nurses enter the workforce in the six months since the department took measures to increase shift allowances and the ratios of nurses to hospital beds as part of the government’s efforts to improve their working conditions.
Among those, 1,545 nurses were first-time job seekers while 1,125 were experienced nurses returning to the profession after having left for more than six months, the job bank said.
According to another survey carried out by the department and nursing associations, 5,707 nurses were recruited by more than 300 hospitals between August and last month.
According to department statistics, the turnover rate reached 20 percent last year, which was 3 to 4 percentage points higher than in previous years.
About 17,800 people left the profession last year.
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