Nursing Department

    The Department of Nursing is the biggest arm of Taipei Veterans General Hospital with almost 3000 staff. TVGH Nursing Department has accomplished numerous achievements and innovations in healthcare information technology and intelligent medical care. TVGH Nursing always ranked the top place among Nursing category in Taiwan’s hospital accreditation, and as a result, it is a symbol of quality nursing care. In 2019, TVGH Nursing won a bronze award in the Symbol of National Quality among Nursing Care Services/ Nursing Leadership and Management category.

    In human resources management, TVGH Nursing has devoted to establishing a positive nursing work environment, and talent staff cultivation. The efforts include (1) improve nurses’ salary and welfare, increase government employee’s spot, and smooth promotion channel; (2) construct reasonable Nurse-Patient ratio; (3) expand nurses’ clinical role and functions to provide effective patient care on teamwork basis, develop advanced nursing in different specialty ; (4)the new skill-mixed care model uses auxiliary manpower to provide patients with total care services; (5) promote a culture of accountability, from senior to junior nursing supervisors to create an organizational atmosphere from passive acceptance of instructions to active commitment through personal behavior; (6) establish a perfect training model for leadership functions, emphasize talent succession, train young nursing elites under the age of 35 in 2020, and develop leadership capabilities; (7) emphasize employee care and provide multiple channels to listen to colleague’s voices, such as guardian angels and nursing staff talks. The average turnover rate of nursing staff from 2017 to 2020 is 7.63% and the retention rate is 94.05%, which is superior than that of medical centers nationwide.

    The main tasks for nursing education team are to promote continuing education and elite training of nursing staff. There are(1) cooperate with nursing schools to assist graduates to seamlessly integrate into clinical care through the last mile practicum; (2) implant new nurse training and clinical ladder system to cultivate diverse nursing professionals and expand nursing role and career; (3) promote nursing preceptors cultivation and innovative teaching strategies to improve the effectiveness of clinical teaching; (4) encourage nursing elites to study for advanced degree or short-term training in domestic or foreign institutions to enhance nursing professional quality and international competing abilities; (5) offer training courses for other medical institutions, and provide opportunities for staff from other hospitals to observe and study in our hospital for enhancing academic exchanges with other hospitals;(6) publish the VGH Nursing Journal, which was included in the Chinese Electronic Periodical Service (CEPS).

    In nursing care quality improvement team, TVGH Nursing is the first nationwide to establish a clinical nursing standard of procedure, QC plan, QC indicators, and periodical monitoring to propose corrective measures on abnormal events and follow up the results to enhance healthcare quality as a whole. Innovation and invention of clinical skills to enhance patient safety are whole-heartedly encouraged. That explains why we have won numerous awards, and several new patents.

In nursing research and development, we established the 「e-health」website including Chinese and English version. Further, we integrated「Holistic Intelligence Care Map」and「Health Literacy and Communication」into「Nursing Instruction Management System, NIMS」, to provide patients and publics around 900 pieces of healthcare knowledge with user-friendly interface, integrated information, and feedback mechanism.

    Continuously promote evidence-based nursing (EBN) researches and conduct training program for EBN, nursing research and shared decision-making (SDM) to cultivate nursing researchers. In addition we also encouraged nurses to present their works in academic journals and international conferences. These publications received a lot of awards and affirmation. Finally, we implemented our research findings in clinical practice to improve patient care quality.

    The Department of Nursing established the Nursing Informatics team in 2007, introducing information technology actively and cooperating with the Department of Information Management to develop a patient-centered and optimizing nursing workflow-oriented nursing information system. The innovative unique barcode sticker to identify patients in all nursing systems, improve the safety of nursing operations comprehensively. This system aims to establish a smart nursing database, provide precision and personalized nursing services, and delivering effectiveness in nursing care as well as in nursing management.

    After a century of pioneering, navigating, cultivating, and passing on innovations, TVGH Nursing has persisted in its insistence on clinical care quality, professional and autonomous efforts, patient-centered nursing care, and strong team cohesion and mobilization, and each nurse will continue to move toward the vision of quality nursing care that patients love and a civilized workplace that angel’s desire. In the future, TVGH Nursing will continue to create a positive and civility workplace in the future, which will attract more excellent talents join nursing profession, we will still be able to lead the country’s nursing profession development, synchronized with the international nursing standard, and continuously provide people with the best quality care.