Groups yesterday criticized plans by hospital operators to close down outpatient services at night and on holidays as a countermeasure to being required to pay healthcare workers overtime.
Starting today, all healthcare workers — with the exception of doctors — are to be paid for regular working hours, including any overtime as required, under the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法).
Previously, it was easy for hospital operators to abuse their position, Taiwan Nurses Union director Jane Lu (盧孳艷) said at a press conference yesterday.
Taiwan Labor Front, the Taiwan Medical Alliance for Labor Justice and Patient Safety and Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) jointly held the press conference.
Hospitals used “the excuses of needing manpower for emergencies, surgeries and intensive care units to excessively exploit nurses without paying them overtime,” Lu said.
Unions praised the government’s amendments, but called for an immediate compliance check at all medical facilities.
Just days before the change was to take effect, the chairman and the executive director of the Taiwan Hospital Association (THA) reportedly expressed concern over the change and said hospitals would be forced to consider shutting outpatient services to compensate for the manpower shortages as a result of shelling out more in wages.
Lin said the threat was “shameful,” adding that the government’s plan had been a long-term one with supporting measures.
“The government has doled out as much as NT$8 billion [US$268 million] to hospitals for five years since 2009 to help them pay nurses’ salaries, overtime and bonuses,” Lin said. “It has been part of the raft of measures designed to prepare them for the change.”
Lee Wui-chiang (李偉強), the director-general of the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Department of Medical Affairs, also criticized the hospital association’s response as “made out of impulse.”
“Healthcare workers in outpatient services have always been protected by the regulations on regular working hours. It is the intensive care units or emergency room workers who were not protected previously,” Lee said.
“We have to make sure that people’s rights to medical treatment are protected,” by continuing services, Lee said, but added that the ministry does not encourage night outpatient services because of the risks of people exploiting medical resources.
However, Lee said he has contacted various medical centers and hospitals and none, including the one operated by the THA’s executive director, said their outpatient services would be reduced.
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
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
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