After working at National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) in Taipei, I transferred to the hospital’s Yunlin branch, where I soon learned that many farmers take great care of their crops, but not such good care of their health. I also discovered that there is a difference between having an awareness of Taiwan’s medical landscape and experiencing it.
I knew that Taipei is home to an aging population, but when I worked at the Taipei hospital, I saw that most elderly people arrived at the hospital clinic under their own power.
However, my first impression in Yunlin was that most elderly patients that come into my consulting room were senile and in a wheelchair, or are even arrived lying in a hospital bed, with oxygen equipment to help them breathe.
They might look old, but they are often a dozen-or-so years younger than most of the elderly patients I saw in Taipei. Seeing that they aged so rapidly surprised me and I wanted to find the reason for this.
One day, shortly after I started practicing at Yunlin, the nurse in the consulting room said to me: “Excuse me, but you need to please check each patient a bit faster.”
Hearing that gave me a strange feeling — I have always been careful to spend quality time with patients. The condition of the patient determines how much time I spend consulting and treating them, and no one needs to discuss with me the length of time that I spend with them.
Smiling, I asked the nurse: “What’s the hurry?” She solemnly told me: “Transportation in the Yunlin area is inconvenient. Bus service from the coastal areas to the hospital is only available twice a day — in the morning, a bus brings passengers here, and in the afternoon, another one takes them home. A patient who misses the afternoon bus will have to spend the night sleeping in a chair in the hospital waiting room, and catch the bus home in the morning.”
I was stunned — I would never have imagined that seeking medical treatment in Yunlin could be such a long and arduous journey.
Yunlin has the second-biggest population of elderly people, but county residents generally travel 16km to a bus stop, whereas a bus stop is typically only 300m away in Taipei, New Taipei City and Taichung.
A nurse in Yunlin once told me: “One day when I was on my way into the consulting room to talk with a doctor, a farming woman wearing a head scarf stopped me and asked if she could see the doctor first, because her bus was due to arrive in 20 minutes. If she had missed it, she would have needed to wait until 3pm.”
As a result, elderly Yunlin residents never go see a doctor for a minor ailment — when they do see a doctor, it is because they have a serious condition. When patients only go to see a doctor when it is too late, the doctor often only gets to treat patients who are terminally ill.
This is not only a sad state of affairs, but it is also gut-wrenching.
I began to consider whether there were other ways to offer medical services. People have such difficulty getting to the hospital, why not use advancements in telecommunications to take medical services to where the patients are?
Limited Internet access and slow network speeds used to hamper telemedicine, but the 5G era could mark the beginning of a new generation of elderly care.
This is also the idea that lies behind National Taiwan University Hospital’s Houston-Apollo Model, a telehealth project launched at the Yunlin branch two years ago. This project, the first of its kind in Taiwan, aims to bring medical resources to patients with the help of advanced telecommunications.
Liou Horng-huei is deputy director of National Taiwan University Hospital’s Yunlin branch and a professor of neurology at National Taiwan University’s College of Medicine.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
In the past month, two important developments are poised to equip Taiwan with expanded capabilities to play foreign policy offense in an age where Taiwan’s diplomatic space is seriously constricted by a hegemonic Beijing. Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) led a delegation of Taiwan and US companies to the Philippines to promote trilateral economic cooperation between the three countries. Additionally, in the past two weeks, Taiwan has placed chip export controls on South Africa in an escalating standoff over the placing of its diplomatic mission in Pretoria, causing the South Africans to pause and ask for consultations to resolve
An altercation involving a 73-year-old woman and a younger person broke out on a Taipei MRT train last week, with videos of the incident going viral online, sparking wide discussions about the controversial priority seats and social norms. In the video, the elderly woman, surnamed Tseng (曾), approached a passenger in a priority seat and demanded that she get up, and after she refused, she swung her bag, hitting her on the knees and calves several times. In return, the commuter asked a nearby passenger to hold her bag, stood up and kicked Tseng, causing her to fall backward and
In South Korea, the medical cosmetic industry is fiercely competitive and prices are low, attracting beauty enthusiasts from Taiwan. However, basic medical risks are often overlooked. While sharing a meal with friends recently, I heard one mention that his daughter would be going to South Korea for a cosmetic skincare procedure. I felt a twinge of unease at the time, but seeing as it was just a casual conversation among friends, I simply reminded him to prioritize safety. I never thought that, not long after, I would actually encounter a patient in my clinic with a similar situation. She had
A recent trio of opinion articles in this newspaper reflects the growing anxiety surrounding Washington’s reported request for Taiwan to shift up to 50 percent of its semiconductor production abroad — a process likely to take 10 years, even under the most serious and coordinated effort. Simon H. Tang (湯先鈍) issued a sharp warning (“US trade threatens silicon shield,” Oct. 4, page 8), calling the move a threat to Taiwan’s “silicon shield,” which he argues deters aggression by making Taiwan indispensable. On the same day, Hsiao Hsi-huei (蕭錫惠) (“Responding to US semiconductor policy shift,” Oct. 4, page 8) focused on
RSS