The majority of healthcare practitioners said that they have been treated rudely by patients or patients’ relatives, a survey conducted by 1111 Job Bank revealed.
According to the survey, which collected valid questionnaires from 611 healthcare practitioners between Aug. 10 and Wednesday, 91 percent of healthcare professionals said they have been treated “unreasonably.”
The most common types of “unreasonable” treatment were abusive or insulting remarks, having complaints filed against them and rudeness, the respondents said.
Fifty-nine percent of those who faced such treatment said they usually choose to ignore it rather then reporting it to hospital management, as most of the reports are met with comforting words, a request to apologize to the patient or their relatives, or the promise that the managers would communicate with the patient or their relatives, the survey showed.
The job bank said some practitioners have also been sexually harassed at work, citing as an example a nurse at a dialysis center in New Taipei City who said a patient pinched her buttocks while she was treating another patient, adding that sexual harassment of nurses occurs almost on a daily basis.
The survey showed that practitioners at psychiatry departments were treated unreasonably most often, followed by those working in emergency rooms and rehabilitation departments, while there were relatively fewer cases in otolaryngology departments.
Physicians at psychiatry departments have higher chances of encountering irrational people with unpredictable behavior, and emergency rooms often have patients and their relatives who are relatively emotional due to the urgent nature of the situation, Job Bank vice president Daniel Lee (李大華) said.
Rehabilitation departments often treat people with chronic illnesses or people who need long-term care, so the patients or their family members might be in relatively low spirits, he said.
The practice rate of nursing students is only 61 percent in Taiwan, because many of them leave theirs jobs due to low salaries and welfare benefits, as well as frequent cases of medical disputes and violent behavior toward healthcare practitioners, Taiwan Union of Nurses Association secretary-general Tzeng Seu-Yi (曾修儀) said.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
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