The nurses are taking the matters into their own hands by taking it to the streets on Labor Day. Feeling underpaid and underappreciated, a parade was held on Sunday to protest against their unfavorable working environment.

In response to the outcry, the Minister of the Department of Health said in an open statement, that the DOH has allocated 1 billion NT dollars to tackle the problem of staff shortage in the hospitals across the island, while stressing the need to regulate their hours, to avoid overworking them.

A group of nurses marched with other protesters in the Labor Day Anti-Poverty Parade, holding banners and shouting out their slogans, in an effort to demand hospitals to improve nursing staff's working conditions.

Due to the decrease of reimbursement by the national health insurance, hospitals have lowered the number of staff, leading to the increase of medical personnel's workload. According to the National Union of Nurses Associations, around 70% of hospitals have problems in recruiting enough nurses due to the excessive workload of the occupation.

As a result, a night shift nurse on average needs to take care of around 16 to 30 patients, which is 3 to 6 times more than night shift nurses in developed countries.

Problems associated with excessive overtime and a shortage of medical personnel have threatened the quality of medical care provided to patients.

Therefore, Department of Health has decided to revise related regulations to help correct the manpower shortage problem in hospitals by the end of this year.

Minister of DOH, Chiu Wen-da has also indicated in an open letter that medical staff shortage this year is particularly severe, while 90 percent of hospitals can't find enough nursing staff.

To help the understaffed hospitals, the DOH has allocated 1 billion NT dollars to fund the nursing staff's salary. As for the excessive working hours, Chiu hopes that hospitals can help set a reasonable working hours for medical staff, to secure the medical quality.