The Ministry of Health and Welfare on Friday announced nurse-to-patient ratio targets with monetary rewards for medical institutions that meet the goal, as hospitals struggle to hire and retain nursing staff.
The goals to go into effect on March 1 were set based on input from nursing unions, as well as staffing data over the past six months and discussions with representatives from medical institutions, Minister of Health and Welfare Hsueh Jui-yuan (薛瑞元) told a news conference in Taipei.
Different ratios are to be set depending on the type of institution and shift, with large medical centers targeting a ratio of 1-6 for the day shift, 1-9 for the evening shift and 1-11 for the night (graveyard) shift, the ministry said.
Photo: Wu Liang-yi, Taipei Times
Regional hospitals should aim for a ratio of 1-7 during the day, 1-11 in the evening and 1-13 at night, it said.
The ratios for local institutions are set at 1-10, 1-13 and 1-15 respectively, it added.
The scheme would also include penalties for institutions that fail to meet the goal if formally written into law, but for now the ministry is pursuing the carrot side of the carrot-and-stick approach, it said.
The announcement detailed plans set forth by the government last year to improve chronic nursing shortages.
The budget approved by the Cabinet in September included NT$18 billion (US$575.63 million) annually over the next seven years to add at least 67,000 nurses to the workforce by 2030.
The funding would go toward boosting nursing salaries with higher rewards for working late shifts, while hospitals would be rewarded for meeting certain nurse-to-patient ratios and creating a nursing-friendly working environment.
The three-shift schedule has long been a topic of debate, as it is one of the top reasons cited by nurses for leaving the industry.
Of the NT$4 billion set aside this year for the scheme, NT$2.7 billion is to go toward rewarding nurses for picking up evening and graveyard shifts, the ministry said on Friday, with bonuses to be distributed starting from this month.
Amounts would also differ depending on the size of the institution, ranging from NT$400 to NT$600 for the evening shift and NT$600 to NT$1,000 for the graveyard shift, it said.
The remaining NT$1.3 billion would be used to burnish any shortcomings in the bonuses, with the rest allocated to hospitals to boost night-shift salaries for other divisions as they see fit, it added.
The most that can be earned under the plan is an additional NT$21,000 per month, by a nurse who works only graveyard shifts for the total 21 days in a large medical center, ministry data showed.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
RSS