Programs to train foreign nurses still falling short
Asahi Shimbun, Japan
EDITORIAL: Programs to train foreign nurses still falling short
30 March 2013
With its rapidly aging population, Japan will need to increasingly rely on help provided by foreign health care workers.
Unfortunately, programs to accept nurses from Indonesia and the Philippines as part of Japan’s economic cooperation with these countries have not worked out as well as had been envisioned. A radical reform of the system to train foreign nurses is in order.
Under bilateral economic partnership agreements, Japan started accepting candidates to work as nurses in Japan from Indonesia and the Philippines five years ago.
But Japan’s national licensing exam for nurses has proved a formidable barrier to their careers in this country. Only 30 nurse trainees from the countries passed this year’s exam, or 9.6 percent of the foreign applicants. Both figures were lower than those for last year.
Some measures have been taken to give the foreign applicants preferential treatment, such as longer test times. But they have not been effective.
The dismal track record of the programs has raised questions about whether they should be continued.
Meanwhile, there has been a steady supply of foreign nurses to Japanese medical institutions through private-sector channels.
They are people who have obtained nurse licenses in their home countries and acquired a good command of Japanese. The health ministry allows such people to take the national licensing exam for nurses. It is believed that more than 100 such applications, mostly Chinese, passed this year’s exam.
The government-led economic partnership agreement programs are based on a “learning while working” model. As candidates to become licensed nurses, trainees arrive in Japan and learn Japanese and professional nursing while taking care of patients. They are not allowed to administer medical treatment or visit the homes of patients.
Under the original rules, trainees are required to return home if they fail to pass the nursing exam within three years. But the government has been allowing a one-year extension of their stay in Japan.
In contrast, the Chinese nurses supplied through private-sector channels are carving out careers in Japan through a “working after learning” formula.
They learn nursing and Japanese at vocational schools in their home country and then continue improving their language skills in Japan by attending Japanese language schools for one to two years.
The pass rate among Chinese applications is high. One big advantage for them is their knowledge of Chinese characters. The need to learn kanji for the Japanese exam imposes a heavy additional burden on applicants from other countries.
The economic partnership agreement programs are complicated and hard to understand. Some of the participants in the programs have chosen to secure employment in Japan by obtaining a license to work as an assistant nurse before passing the nursing exam, or decided to return home without extending their stay in Japan.
In order to avoid such confusion, it is necessary to change the approach to training foreign nurses under the programs by separating the training period from the working period.
What is vital is to enhance advance training. The government should help nursing schools in Indonesia and the Philippines establish a Japanese language department and provide scholarships to the students.
Then, it should provide intensive Japanese training in Japan for foreign applicants for a nursing license.
It is also important to take measures to ensure that the private sector will play an increasing larger role in the training of foreign nurses in line with the supply-demand situation in the job market.
In the future, the government should consider a more flexible system to allow more foreign nurses to work in Japan based on comprehensive assessments of such factors as the nursing qualifications applicants have obtained in their countries, as well as their communication skills in Japanese.
It will be too late if the government starts taking measures to fix the situation after the shortage of nurses becomes even more serious.
It is time for Japan to establish an effective policy to accept more immigrant care workers as a step toward opening the nation’s labor market to foreign nationals.
