The Sept. 7 letter "Real barriers to foreign nurses" suggests that the lack of Japanese-language proficiency of foreign-trained nurses poses a threat to the well-being of patients in Japan's hospitals. While I don't have all the facts, my girlfriend, who is a nurse, tells me that she and her colleagues welcome the foreign nurses, who are eager to work and learn Japanese under the supervision of senior staff. She says the real problem is that hospitals want to keep their costs down and, at night especially, this means an average of 20 patients per nurse. If a patient needs acute care, it means that a single nurse may be left caring for most of the patients.
As a result, nurses (whose wages are infamously low) quit due to their own physical and mental exhaustion. This is a vicious cycle, forcing many once-idealistic and caring medical workers out of the profession.
At one hospital we know of, the turnover rate is 50 percent of all newly hired nurses within a year. Making foreign nurses the scapegoat is easy, but the real issue is that in a capitalist economy, people count for less than profits, as filmmaker Michael Moore has shown. This is the issue that must be addressed if we care about the well-being of both patients and their caregivers.
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