| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 法律學系法律專業組 === 104 === The current nursing care environment in Taiwan is imbued with high turn-over rate and low practice rate, and can be attributed to factors such as inadequate manpower allocation, mass patient load, heavy workload, low pay and benefits, and frequent overtime. If the practice environment continues worsening, in time fewer nursing personnel will be available, and as a consequence, patients won’t receive good care, and our health care quality will suffer drastically. This is an important issue that needs to be addressed accordingly. Therefore, this article investigates the issue of nurse practice environment from the perspective of working hours, which constitutes the core of employer-employee relationship and greatly influences employees’ work-life balance and mental/physical health. As the working hours of nursing personnel is under considerable controversy, this article attempts to analyze the status quo and investigate the suitability of current legislatures, in order to improve the current environment.
The article first addresses the current status quo of manpower in healthcare institutions, allocation of nursing personnel, job characteristics and working hours in Taiwan, which illustrates workload status and labor conditions. Secondly, this article introduces the legislatures and regulations regarding work hours that are applicable to nursing personnel, then followed by drawing the controversy on working hours faced by nursing personnel – the “On call” policy, whether the time before/after work and training hours are considered working hours, whether the overtime compensation for nursing personnel is reasonable, insufficient break hours, whether the current shift policy is appropriate, etc. Moreover, discussion on these issues is supplemented with analyses of legislative regulations, academic theories and courts' opinions, and summarized by introducing the example of German legislatures on work hours and how such policies may inspire our own policy making.
In summary, this article considers that the hours spent on call, shift inventory, shift transfer and completion of nursing records can be deemed as working hours, while training hours should be determined on a case-by-case basis. Furthermore, the article also provides insights on legislature reforms for work shifts, overtime, time break, stand-by time and night shifts, based on the German legislatures for working hours. Despite the regulations, the aspect of policy is important as well; only with appropriate nursing/patient ratio, clear nursing work objectives, frequent labor auditing and strong awareness of labor rights for both the employers and employees can the issue of nursing work hours be properly settled.
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