Healthcare Needs Among New Immigrate Spouses in Taiwan

Purpose: To examine health care needs among new immigrate in Taiwan. This is a descriptive research design.

Methods: This study used a purposive sampling method to recruit foreign and mainland Chinese spouses in Taiwan. SPSS 16.0 for Windows was used to analyze the data. An alpha of 0.05 was set as the level of significance. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, independent t test, and Pearson correlation.  

Results: Three hundred and forty-seven new immigrate spouses were recruited in southern Taiwan. The age of subjects ranged from 21-35 years old (58.5%). The majority subjects’ educational level was junior high school (33.1%) and high received (31.4%). The majority of subjects came from southeast countries (62.5%). Results showed that majority of subject perceived good health (71.1%). Subjects also reported that they do not have other health insurance rather than national health insurance (72.3%). When subjects felt un-comfortable, only 47% of them went to visit a doctor. Thirty-three percent of them did was forbearance, and 18.2% used medicine without prescription. The major reason they did not go to visit a doctor immediate when they were sick was lack of time. 

Conclusion: This study is important for health care workers in Taiwan to understand health care needs among new immigrate spouses in Taiwan. Hence, health care worker in Taiwan should used these information to assist new immigrate spouses to maintain and improve their health.