The number of nurse assistants in Taiwan has more than doubled over the past three years, the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW) said yesterday.
Ministry statistics show that there are more than 60,000 certified nurse assistants in the nation, with an employment rate of more than 70 percent.
The National Development Council predicts that Taiwan will become a super-aged society by 2025, with more than 20 percent of the population aged 65 years or older, as defined by the UN.
Photo: Lin Hui-chin, Taipei Times
The old age dependency ratio — the number of older people compared with working-age people, aged 15 to 64 years — is increasing each year, the council said, adding that there would be the same number of old people as working-age people in the nation by 2040.
It estimates that the elderly population would reach 7,457,037 by 2025, the highest in the nation’s history, while the working-age population will continue to drop after it reached the peak of about 17.56 million in 2015.
Chou Tao-chun (周道君), an official at the ninistry’s Long-term Care Services Division, said that the demand for long-term care is expected to grow in the next 10 years, and despite advances in care technology and people’s health awareness, the existing long-term care model might at some point become overwhelmed.
However, the rapidly growing number of certified nurse assistants would be enough to meet the current long-term care demand, he said.
Chou said that 8,908 nurse assistants finished training last year, and the employment rate of nurses three months after their training has increased from 63.6 percent in 2011 to 71.7 percent in 2018.
More than 60,000 certified nurse assistants were in June employed in communities and at facilities, which is about 2.1 times the number three years ago, Chou said.
“The growth rate is over 100 percent,” he added.
Chou said that policies introduced in the past few years have led to an increase in salaries of certified nurse assistants, as the ministry has, for example, stipulated that the monthly salaries of full-time assistants cannot be lower than NT$32,000, or NT$200 per hour.
Citing the statistics, the average salary has reached NT$38,500 per month and NT$235 per hour, he said, adding that he believes that the number of people willing to become certified nurse assistants will increase.
While some experts have suggested that nurse assistants be examined by a national-level agency, the ministry said this was unlikely to be implemented, as it might conflict with current nursing certificates and endanger the jobs of nurse assistants.
If the ministry was to amend the exam regulations, raising the standards to that of other nationally examined “care service specialists,” such as physicians, it would imperil the work of any caregiver without such a certificate and expose them to potential jail sentences of up to five years, Chou said.
The current requirement for certified nurse assistants includes 90 hours of training, which is relatively short compared with other countries, he said, adding that whether the training requirements should be expended is up for discussion.
Additional reporting by Rachel Lin and Yang Mien-chieh
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