About 10 percent of the nation’s emergency room (ER) doctors leave their profession 10 years into their practice, causing a serious manpower shortage, according to a study published at a medical conference yesterday.
ER doctors give up their practice for many reasons, including the flawed payment system under the national health insurance system and having to work in a perennially high-stress environment, said Lee Yi-kung (李宜恭), chief of the Emergency Department at Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital in Chiayi’s Dalin Township (大林).
“We found that ER doctors quit their practice more often than hospital-based doctors specializing in other fields,” Lee said at this year’s Annual Conference of the Taiwan Society of Emergency Medicine.
Lee and his team surveyed 1,721 registered ER doctors nationwide and followed their careers from 1997 to 2010. They found that during the 13 years, 10 percent of the doctors have either retired or changed their specialty.
The turnover was higher than that of doctors with other hospital-based specialties, like radiology, pathology and anesthesiology.
“The study results yield several implications,” Lee said, urging health authorities to pay attention to the brain drain situation in emergency rooms.
With 1,100 ER doctors taking care of 6 million patients per year, Lee said that an increasing workload resulting from the brain drain could drive even more doctors away.
The present ER doctor-patient ratio is already short of the 1:5,000 standard set by the Department of Health, he added.
“Being an ER doctor is a profession that requires accumulation of experience,” he said.
Unfortunately, the national health insurance system, which covers 99 percent of the population, does not recognize that, Lee added. ER doctors, for example, are only paid NT$400 (US$13) for conducting an intubation, a process that is done under high stress and requires intense concentration, he said.
The two-day conference, themed Refining Emergency Medicine Specialty through Excelling Medical Education, attracted physicians from China, Hong Kong and Canada.
WANG RELEASED: A police investigation showed that an organized crime group allegedly taught their clients how to pretend to be sick during medical exams Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) and 11 others were released on bail yesterday, after being questioned for allegedly dodging compulsory military service or forging documents to help others avoid serving. Wang, 33, was catapulted into stardom for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代). Lately, he has been focusing on developing his entertainment career in China. The New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office last month began investigating an organized crime group that is allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified documents. Police in New Taipei City Yonghe Precinct at the end of last month arrested the main suspect,
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
Eleven people, including actor Darren Wang (王大陸), were taken into custody today for questioning regarding the evasion of compulsory military service and document forgery, the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said. Eight of the people, including Wang, are suspected of evading military service, while three are suspected of forging medical documents to assist them, the report said. They are all being questioned by police and would later be transferred to the prosecutors’ office for further investigation. Three men surnamed Lee (李), Chang (張) and Lin (林) are suspected of improperly assisting conscripts in changing their military classification from “stand-by
LITTORAL REGIMENTS: The US Marine Corps is transitioning to an ‘island hopping’ strategy to counterattack Beijing’s area denial strategy The US Marine Corps (USMC) has introduced new anti-drone systems to bolster air defense in the Pacific island chain amid growing Chinese military influence in the region, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. The new Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) Mk 1 is being developed to counter “the growing menace of unmanned aerial systems,” it cited the Marine Corps as saying. China has constructed a powerful defense mechanism in the Pacific Ocean west of the first island chain by deploying weapons such as rockets, submarines and anti-ship missiles — which is part of its anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy against adversaries — the
RSS