Physician Shortages

 

No doctors can be found when you want to see one. This scenario could happen in a decade in Taiwan. National Health Research Institutes, or NHRI, states that Taiwan is facing a serious shortage of physicians. Among all doctors in Taiwan, Department of Medicine is having the biggest trouble. Taiwan could be lacking 3788 physicians by 2022. On the other hand, gynecologists are facing a rather different crisis, aging. More than 50% of them are going to be over 60 by 2022.

 

Hsiung - Chao, Director of Institute of Population Health Sciences, stated, “Taiwan is rapidly transforming into an aging society, which means that the burden of physicians and surgeons are increasing. If there aren’t any newcomers, the working time of these doctors is definitely going to increase. This could cause the shortage problem to go even worse, and could also take its toll on the quality of medical treatments.

In recent years, Taiwan is in the middle of a rather awkward situation because of the rising medical dispute and the failing trend of the National Health Insurance. This awkward situation is known as “The Lack of the Big Five” (physicians, surgeons, obstetricians, pediatricians, and emergency medicine specialists). NHRI estimates that Taiwan could be short of 7000 doctors in ten years (physicians account for 4000, surgeons account for 1500, emergency medical specialists account for 700, obstetricians account for 46 to 216, and pediatricians fortunately don’t lack that much).

 

NHRI also conducted an enquiry on all 40000 doctors in Taiwan. According to the 5000 inquiry sheet recollected, the doctors that work the longest are surgeons, who have to work 15 hours a day, 5 days a week. Second place goes to physicians, third place goes to obstetricians, and emergency medical specialists work the fourth longest.

Because of the decreasing trend of infants born, obstetricians have no shortage problems. However, nowadays obstetricians are averaging 6 years older than the other doctors. In 2022, the percentage of obstetricians over 60 is going to reach 49%. Taken the fact that elder obstetricians need to work less into account, Taiwan still requires newcomers to join the department of obstetrics and gynecology.

Shih-Jin-Chung, Obstetrics assistant professor of National Taiwan University Hospital, stated that many young doctors quit the job or went abroad because of the rising medical dispute and the dropping payment. This could be the reason why obstetricians are aging.

Also, patients seeking help from the department of obstetrics prefer female to male obstetricians, which is why more than 80% of obstetricians are female. However, many patients consider male is more trustworthy when it comes to surgery. How to balance the gender ratio is another task for obstetricians.

 

鄭文芳醫師是台大知名的婦科男醫師

2015 /12/ 4 United Evening News