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Japan likely to face shortage of 270,000 nursing staff by 2025

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just the beginning. nothing new.

broken system has limit.

7 ( +8 / -1 )

My local hospital has 3 nurses taking care of 50 patients during night shift-half of the patients are demented....

5 ( +6 / -1 )

My stepdaughter is a nurse on her third year out of uni. She’s on a 6 day roster with rotating shifts of between 10 and 12 hours. I would not wish that job on anybody! She has aged ten years already and is constantly exhausted. Plus, her salary is nothing to get excited about. I wish Japan good luck trying to find slaves to fill that void.

14 ( +14 / -0 )

Going by government fudging of figures add at least another 30% or more. It's a sucky low paid job that even third world staff are not so much interested in. But as this problem was known about 40 years ago I expect a pledge, promise in the next 40 years and a government Pannel of experts to submit it will take an exta 20 years to to find someone willing to make a decision.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

Overwork is common in the healthcare field in most countries. My sister is an LPN and she has been doing incredible hours since she finished nursing school. Even more as she moved up the ladder and gained certifications. But most of her hours is because she is padding her retirement. The benefits that are given to people in those fields tend to also allow overtime pay and hours be counted in order to multiply their effects.

I wonder if Japan has the same system.

The same way in the past many NYPD officers used to pad overtime so they could retire after 10 years and have their retirement salaries be the average of their past 10 years working. They needed 10 years to qualify for the early retirement benefits. Healthcare professionals also had a very similar system.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Help, the aged!

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Help, the aged!

This is not just aged care. This is ALL nursing.

The estimate, which covers registered nurses, assistant nurses, public health nurses and midwives,

To secure skilled healthcare workers, the ministry is making an effort to improve working conditions in the field, where overwork is a common problem.

This statement is simply not true.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Local governments need to "revise their health care plans and strive to secure skilled workers in line with the actual situation," an official of the ministry said.

The Ministry of Health.. dumps responsibility it on local Govt. Pathetic.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

When she was on unemployment benefit for three months, Hello Work offered my wife a package that was free tuition for two years, unemployment benefit for two years, and a free train pass to attend college to become a care giver. The whole package was worth about six million yen. We have three kids and the college was full time and 90 minutes away, making it a complete nonstarter, but that is an indication of how desperate they are to find people for nursing and care giving.

I'm surprised the shortage is most prominent in urban areas. Loads of little towns and villages have much older populations. Maybe their hospitals have simply closed due to kasoka (depopulation-driven decline). It took a huge campaign for our closest maternity ward (30 minutes away) to stay open.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Looks like a car trip into the mountains might be on the agenda.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Have qualified nurses from other nations come in, and give them a good visa.

Offer them accommodations and a good wage.

Realize that they may only be able to do 6 months or so of prior Japanese study. Offer free lessons.

Be more flexible (as theres not enough Japanese peeps)

1 ( +1 / -0 )

My Japanese better half has been an RN midwife gynecology nurse 30+ years, her parents perished during the tsunami. we never receive one word of condolence, not one yen of assistance, all we got was an invoice from tax office to aid victims of the disasters, like gov't's of most countries this one is totally forked.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

Great efforts are being made in Japan to develop robots to do a lot of the nursing/care work. Anything to avoid immigrants tainting this wonderful nation's purity. The last thing sick or old people need is human warmth and understanding. Let's have cute humanoids who can kick a ball and lurch lopsidedly up stairs. Kawaii!!!

0 ( +1 / -1 )

salary wise in USA she could make 3x what she earns in Japan but considering all the amenities Japan offers I haven't done the math but life here is very comfortable healthy and safe, my own extensive medical treatments would have been unaffordable elsewhere, and education for our 3 kids is affordable - Univ about 1.5 mil annual opposed to much more in USA. end of the day life is pretty decent here not perfect but do-able.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

One word. Robots.

-3 ( +1 / -4 )

One word. Robots.

One word: No.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

it's a shame because all of the Japanese doctors nurses and staff workers taking care of me and other patients are wonderful dedicated professionals, it's the system and those in charge who are scumbags...

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Somebody should convey this information to the people who declare that nurses coming in from abroad have to pass a test that includes reciting the entire imperial family lineage, memorizing 250 haiku, and painting 15,000 kanji while blindfolded.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

I would not wish that job on anybody! She has aged ten years already and is constantly exhausted. Plus, her salary is nothing to get excited about.

agreed my wife while not a nurse was an aged care worker, while the salary wasnt bad and she actually enjoyed working with the patients the job was a soul draining parasite. Shed have to do night shift once a week and end up being away almost 24hrs with about 2~3 hrs sleep during the night, she looked like a zombie once a week. she was constantly doing 60~70hr weeks and when you added all the overtime she did and divided it into her salary over a month shed actually would have been lucky to make the minimum wage.

I finally blew my top and said you cant keep doing this or youll die young, doesnt matter how much you enjoy the job, youd be better off working for McDonalds!!. I said you can come work for me which she now does for about the same salary, half the hrs! Coincidently the timing was perfect as the company she worked for was going to promote her to area manager slightly higher salary but even more hrs!! Now she works normal hrs can still be home when the kids finish school!

I tell you people quality of life is worth more any salary you may think your worth

2 ( +2 / -0 )

“With the minimum age of those born to the baby boomer generation to be 75 by the year 2025”

Wiki: “The Baby Boom generation is most often defined as those individuals born between 1946 and 1964.”

Care to revise your erroneous claim to 61?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Lot if these Philippine nurses, out for a US green card, instead of working in Japan

-3 ( +1 / -4 )

This article, while being rewritten here now, is actually a regurgitation of an issue that is plaguing Japan for nearly a decade or more. There have been numerous articles here about this very subject, and the commentary is similar.

It's not just about money, nor working conditions, it's about making the medical/nursing field an attractive career to young men and women.

If you are a nursing assistant here, an orderly, commonly called a "helper" here, the pay is low, and the "nurses" far too often bully them and far too many quit because of it. Doctors often bully their nurses, and so on and so forth, to the point that the medical field is not a field that many want to work in.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Just thinking of taking care of strangers is already a problem at first but still some wants to have a career. So to respect that achievement, nurses should have title as 'Nrs.', like Dr. For Doctors.

But nurses think themselves superior and bully caretakers. Those caretakers are the one doing more work..more better caring to the patients, Nurses just give medicines on time and follow doctors. They don't wipe the dirt like caretakers do. Patients also feel more closer to the caretakers and those are all poor staff from poor countries.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

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