Healthcare and patient safety are compromised by overworked physicians, who should be protected by the Labor Standards Act (勞基法), the Taiwan Medical Alliance for Labor Justice and Patient Safety (TMAL) said yesterday.
“There is one hospital’s surgical ward where three residents were responsible for 30 shifts before two of the three resigned. As a result there is one physician left to bear the burden of the 30 shifts now, as the hospital is reluctant to hire new people,” TMAL chairman Chong Chee-Fah (張志華) said.
After an intern had died and a resident doctor had a heart attack at work, the Ministry of Health and Welfare is starting to consider bringing interns under the act, Taiwan Association for Victims of Occupational Injuries (TAVOI) organizer Liu Nien-Yun (劉念雲) said.
However, a lawsuit filed against Chi Mei Hospital by Tsai Po-
chiang (蔡伯羌), a former surgical resident at the hospital who collapsed outside an operating room due to overwork, was unsuccessful at the first trial. The court ruled that the relationship between Tsai and the hospital was not of employment, and the hospital is not liable for the damage, Liu said.
“The juries believed that physicians are independent workers whose judgments are not meddled with by superiors. However, that is only true in the area of professional decisions; it does not mean that the doctors hold the whip hand when it comes to labor,” said Lin Chia-ho (林佳和), an assistant professor at National Chengchi University’s College of Law.
Lin said in other developed countries physicians were the first to be protected by labor protection laws, whereas in Taiwan, the interns were the first to be guaranteed protection.
The ministry has so far avoided the issue in order to bypass the provision of the act that puts a cap on working hours, but the negligence has turned Taiwan’s hospitals into sweatshops and jeopardized care and patient safety, the group said.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its