The South Korean Netflix series The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call is a story about front-line medical staff who perform emergency treatment to save lives with insufficient resources, incapable or incompetent administration, and a society that misunderstands them and their duties. The drama epitomizes Taiwan’s medical system as it stands today.
At this year’s Taipei International Book Exhibition, National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) superintendent Wu Ming-shiang (吳明賢) said: “National Health Insurance has altered the medical ecosystem, and an unreasonable practitioner payment system is leading to young and new doctors’ unwillingness to take up work on the front line.”
That revealed the essence of the problem.
Despite Wu’s candor, several prominent members of the medical community have instead chosen to blame young doctors for “pursuing profit,” disregarding the more fundamental issue: When the system makes it so difficult to provide life-saving treatment, leaving it is perhaps the more rational option.
No matter whether it is emergency trauma care, internal medicine, family practice, obstetrics or pediatrics — or even fields of medicine long seen as “easy,” such as ophthalmology, dermatology and nursing — all medical workers face similar difficulties: excessively long working hours, high stress, low salaries and inadequate resources, yet they still bear society’s misplaced expectations and face the risk of medical malpractice suits.
By comparison, earnings from self-paid care services such as plastic surgery and performing routine health exams are much higher, the work hours more reasonable and the risks of being sued much lower. It is no wonder that younger doctors and medical staff are increasingly turning to those fields, unwilling to burn out within the hospital and medical system.
Wu said that last year, NTUH’s Hsinchu Branch had four outpatient surgeons who left at the same time in favor of private practice that offers monthly salaries as high as NT$700,000 — far higher than the salaries for hospital positions. That phenomenon is not only a personal choice, but is also the result of a system that does provide front-line medical staff with the respect they deserve.
The issue has never been a lack of medical staff, but rather the lack of medical professionals’ willingness to stay on. The South Korean government’s mistakes being placed on full display led to medical professionals across their nation to go on strike.
If Taiwan does not reform its misallocation of resources, it might face a situation in which more fresh medical graduates choose to go into private practice, or forgo practicing medicine in Taiwan altogether for greener pastures overseas.
If they lack reasonable salaries, resources and support, nobody would be willing to take on long-term overwork and low remuneration. That is a market choice, not an issue of ethics and morals.
Established medical professionals in Taiwan complaining and blaming younger doctors does not help to change our shared reality. They should reflect on why under our current system, saving lives has become almost not worth doing.
The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call reveals some hard truths. We need to resolve those issues. We must reform health insurance payments and improve the work environment to make it worthwhile for doctors to return to providing life-saving medical care.
Lu Chun-wei is a dermatologist and assistant professor at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital.
Translated by Tim Smith
From the Iran war and nuclear weapons to tariffs and artificial intelligence, the agenda for this week’s Beijing summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is packed. Xi would almost certainly bring up Taiwan, if only to demonstrate his inflexibility on the matter. However, no one needs to meet with Xi face-to-face to understand his stance. A visit to the National Museum of China in Beijing — in particular, the “Road to Rejuvenation” exhibition, which chronicles the rise and rule of the Chinese Communist Party — might be even more revealing. Xi took the members
A Pale View of Hills, a movie released last year, follows the story of a Japanese woman from Nagasaki who moved to Britain in the 1950s with her British husband and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter was born at a time when memories of the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki during World War II and anxiety over the effects of nuclear radiation still haunted the community. It is a reflection on the legacy of the local and national trauma of the bombing that ended the period of Japanese militarism. A central theme of the movie is the need, at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on Friday used their legislative majority to push their version of a special defense budget bill to fund the purchase of US military equipment, with the combined spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.78 billion). The bill, which fell short of the Executive Yuan’s NT$1.25 trillion request, was passed by a 59-0 margin with 48 abstentions in the 113-seat legislature. KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), who reportedly met with TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) for a private meeting before holding a joint post-vote news conference, was said to have mobilized her
Before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) can blockade, invade, and destroy the democracy on Taiwan, the CCP seeks to make the world an accomplice to Taiwan’s subjugation by harassing any government that confers any degree of marginal recognition, or defies the CCP’s “One China Principle” diktat that there is no free nation of Taiwan. For United States President Donald Trump’s upcoming May 14, 2026 visit to China, the CCP’s top wish has nothing to do with Trump’s ongoing dismantling of the CCP’s Axis of Evil. The CCP’s first demand is for Trump to cease US
RSS