Can a foreigner work as a nurse in Japan?
 

I have a friend that is majoring in Nursing and maybe thinking of working in Japan with a working visa. He is studying Japanese too. Can foreigners work in that field in Japan?

In short, no, not really. He could be a medical interpreter, but hands on is not likely to happen.

I have translated Japanese nursing curriculum before, and the requirements for graduation are different, so your friend would need to attend Japanese nursing school to fill in the blanks, which would mean he would have to be not only fluent in Japanese, but fluent in medical Japanese, which even most Japanese natives are not.

Of course, they can. Nursing is one area, together with care for the elderly, that needs to be filled by non-Japanese. The following are the conditions.

1. Your friend will need to pass the Japanese nursing exams (in Japanese).
2. He must be able to communicate freely with other nurses, patients and dotors. (Both in writing and orally.)
3. He must be willing to work under the same conditions with any other nurses.
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In other words, one could become an English teacher with considerably less efforts (in many cases, no efforts at all) and make considerably more money than a nurse. A sad situation....

They are hiring many Philippine nurses to fill the demand. An American education is preferred by Japanese over Philippines any day.

All of the Philippine nurses I have seen so far have been nursing assistants - not hired or treated as regular nurses. There is a huge demand in care for the elderly, particularly in nursing homes and in-home care. For most of the regular tasks, they don`t need to have the normal qualifications as they don`t actually handle the truly medical bits.

I saw on Japanese TV that they were training them (at a Japanese college)to be actual nurses. Of course these were foreign nurses (there were some American and Aussie nurses too) who had a better than conversational level of Japanese. Of course they had to be retrained to understand that the Japanese body works differently than other nationalities (that was what they told me at my job, it's the same of course;) )
You're right too, I saw that also.
BTW, I didn't make the comment about American education is preferred over Phillipino, the Japanese man on the news story did. I thought I better clear that up before I get called a racist again. I know nothing of the education there.

I read an article that maybe an american foreigner can work as a nurse in the american military places in Japan without having to be in the military. The will be working as a civilian. does any of you know anything about this?

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In other words, one could become an English teacher with considerably less efforts (in many cases, no efforts at all) and make considerably more money than a nurse. A sad situation....[/quote]

wow:eek: really! that really sux!

Who said nurses don't make good money?

I dont think he meant that. he said that some teachers can make more money than nurses with less efforts.

The Filipino "nurses" we are talking about don't sound like the same as "nurses" in the US. These sound like assisted living care givers, and not people that assist in surgery, etc.

the "nurses" from the philippines and indonesia, for that matter too, are in most cases here through the bilateral FTA (or EPA as the are called here) giving them the opportunity to stay and "work" in japan for the purpose of obtaining a qualification as a nurse (看護士) or as a certified careworker (介護福祉士）. in addition these workers have to appointed be the government of the philippines or indonesia. now, if they fail to pass the exam(s), they will need to leave japan.

for more on this http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-pa...609/annex8.pdf

from JP forum's self-proclaimed pseudo-expert on japanese trade policy :ywave:

Civilian contractors are common on many bases all over the world, but the Navy, at least, preferred not to use medical civilian contractors if they could avoid it. I can't speak for the Army or the Air Force.