Premier Jiang Yi-huah has approved a four-year NT$250 million (US$8.33 million) program to ease nursing shortages in remote areas by financing the education of nursing students, said Executive Yuan Spokesperson Sun Lih-chyun today.
Proposed by the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW), the program will inject the funds from 2015 to 2018 to support 200 nursing students at universities and four-year institutes of technology. Upon graduation, these individuals will be assigned to 30 remote-area hospitals, where they will be required to provide clinical nursing services for at least four years.
The MOHW completed plans for the program under directions from President Ma Ying-jeou, who met with nursing groups on April 26, 2013. During the course of planning, the agency frequently invited the Ministry of Education, nursing groups and schools to discuss channels of admission into the program, methods of education and training, and other matters.
Areas to be served under the program will cover not only indigenous communities and offshore islands, but MOHW-designated hospitals in rural and offshore areas as well, Sun said. Also to be included are areas that receive insufficient medical resources from the National Health Insurance system.
To enlist more nursing students to the service of remote areas, eligibility for such state subsidies will be expanded from students with indigenous or offshore island backgrounds to include those of general backgrounds as well. The program not only subsidizes the students' education but also guarantees their working rights for four years after graduation.
Hospitals nationwide are experiencing difficulty in recruiting nursing personnel, and remote areas face an even more acute shortage, Sun pointed out. In 2013, the nurse vacancy rate in remote areas was 7.9 percent compared with the national rate of 6.3 percent, according to the MOHW. Whether in recruitment, turnover or vacancy rates, the remote hospitals face greater difficulties all around, hence the government must assign priority attention to these issues. Premier Jiang directed the MOHW to continue integrating medical resources, setting up a comprehensive health care network, and formulating measures to retain medical personnel in remote and offshore areas.
The nursing staff shortage has been a longstanding problem, said the MOHW, and major changes in the medical and nursing fields in recent years have made it more difficult to practice the profession. To improve the work environment for nurses, the MOHW on May 10, 2012 announced a short and mid-term reform plan containing six objectives and 10 strategies. After the plan's implementation, Taiwan has been seeing rising numbers of nurses returning to and staying in the field.
As of May this year, the number of practicing nurses nationwide totaled 144,883, an increase of 8,468 prior to the reform. In addition, the national turnover rate dropped from 13.1 percent in 2012 to a four-year low of 11.2 percent in 2013, and the vacancy rate fell from 7.4 percent in 2011 to 6.3 percent in 2013. The state-financed student program approved today is also expected to cultivate more nursing professionals, replenish the nursing work force in rural areas, balance medical resources, and safeguard the health rights and interests of remote residents.
The Executive Yuan will continue to work with related agencies, hospitals, and medical and nursing groups to provide residents in remote and outlying areas with timely and comprehensive basic medical services, Sun said.