After En Chu Kong Hospital in New Taipei City on Monday last week administered doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine without diluting it as required, the Central Epidemic Command Center fined the hospital and suspended its right to administer vaccines.
The New Taipei City Department of Health is to review the vaccination procedure and discuss whether the 25 people who received wrong doses need an additional shot.
Although 11 of the 13 recipients who agreed to being hospitalized for observation have been discharged and things are now under control, members of the public are beginning to ask who is accountable for the mistake.
Studies have shown that medication errors are the most common medical error, occurring 3.7 to 16.6 percent of the time. Mistakes can occur at any stage of the process.
The hospital told a news conference that the mistake was made due to negligence during the handover between the pharmacist and the nurse.
Human error being the cause of the incident inevitably leads the public to call for the individuals involved to be held responsible.
However, to prevent similar incidents from happening and to ensure safety with regards to medication, the systemic factors leading to errors by pharmacists and nurses should be reviewed.
Medical staff have been working hard on the front lines to fight the COVID-19 pandemic and protect the public. Since the introduction of COVID-19 vaccines in Taiwan, in addition to administering the shots at their hospitals or clinics, pharmacists and nurses must also support large-scale vaccination stations set up in local communities.
However, there are different COVID-19 vaccine brands, and people receiving the shots are categorized in many groups.
All these factors cause problems that can easily lead to systemic medication errors.
Each time a nurse is assigned a different vaccine, they have to handle it differently. Each vaccine has its own storage requirements and pre-administration procedures.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is perhaps the one with the most stringent storage conditions, and the pre-administration procedure has 10 separate steps.
To fight the pandemic, most nurses are doing more work than what is normally required of them. This means that they might not be familiar with the work environment or procedures they are assigned to, or even the team members they are working with. These factors increase the possibility of systemic error.
Medical errors are an important issue everywhere in the world, and making mistakes is human nature. As a large number of people are getting vaccinated, a certain number of errors will inevitably occur.
After the incident in New Taipei City, the hospital immediately initiated a procedure to handle the situation and made a public apology.
The city’s health department launched an investigation and is aiming to improve vaccination procedures, as well as monitoring and auditing mechanisms.
Regardless of whether the error caused any harm, the focus should be on how to prevent a similar incident from happening again. To ensure safe administration of vaccines, those who made the mistake should not be personally held accountable.
Medical staff are human beings, not gods. Please do not thank them publicly while exposing them to a witch hunt.
Chen Ching-min is a professor at National Cheng Kung University’s Department of Nursing.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
Having lived through former British prime minister Boris Johnson’s tumultuous and scandal-ridden administration, the last place I had expected to come face-to-face with “Mr Brexit” was in a hotel ballroom in Taipei. Should I have been so surprised? Over the past few years, Taiwan has unfortunately become the destination of choice for washed-up Western politicians to turn up long after their political careers have ended, making grandiose speeches in exchange for extraordinarily large paychecks far exceeding the annual salary of all but the wealthiest of Taiwan’s business tycoons. Taiwan’s pursuit of bygone politicians with little to no influence in their home
In 2025, it is easy to believe that Taiwan has always played a central role in various assessments of global national interests. But that is a mistaken belief. Taiwan’s position in the world and the international support it presently enjoys are relatively new and remain highly vulnerable to challenges from China. In the early 2000s, the George W. Bush Administration had plans to elevate bilateral relations and to boost Taiwan’s defense. It designated Taiwan as a non-NATO ally, and in 2001 made available to Taiwan a significant package of arms to enhance the island’s defenses including the submarines it long sought.
US lobbyist Christian Whiton has published an update to his article, “How Taiwan Lost Trump,” discussed on the editorial page on Sunday. His new article, titled “What Taiwan Should Do” refers to the three articles published in the Taipei Times, saying that none had offered a solution to the problems he identified. That is fair. The articles pushed back on points Whiton made that were felt partisan, misdirected or uninformed; in this response, he offers solutions of his own. While many are on point and he would find no disagreement here, the nuances of the political and historical complexities in
Taiwan faces an image challenge even among its allies, as it must constantly counter falsehoods and misrepresentations spread by its more powerful neighbor, the People’s Republic of China (PRC). While Taiwan refrains from disparaging its troublesome neighbor to other countries, the PRC is working not only to forge a narrative about itself, its intentions and value to the international community, but is also spreading lies about Taiwan. Governments, parliamentary groups and civil societies worldwide are caught in this narrative tug-of-war, each responding in their own way. National governments have the power to push back against what they know to be
RSS