Dr. Doctor

Doctors in Japan are extremely different from doctors in America of Korea. 

Let me start with Korea. First of all, in Korea I had to get accustom to saying 'hospital' every time I meant clinic. For them there are no clinics, only hospitals. And when I say hospital, I do not mean the kind with beds. Apparently it is customary to say you go to the 'hospital' whenever you go to the doctor, even if it is just a clinic. And who works in hospitals? doctors. Therefore clearly all doctors work in hospitals. However there are true hospitals as we know them. With the beds and the surgeries and the broken bones. It is at a much larger place, that looks just like your normal one in America.

Moving on, in Korea all doctors are required to learn English, making speaking it for them pretty much no problem. The reason for this is that there are so many English publications for scientific articles that are also important to doctors. Well that is one of the reasons. But there are many. To stay contemporary in terms of administration procedures, equipment, and practices (at least with the English speaking world) are all also very good reasons. Either way, if you have to see a doctor in Korea, chances are that he will speak English a lot better than most. I can personally attest to this seeing as I lived in a tiny little area of roughly 10,000 people (in my country. not my city) and both the doctors spoke wonderful English. One of which I nearly saw monthly. Paragliding is not a sport for the weak. 

Their offices were small and would occasionally be a part of some other building. The one I frequented was in a building that had apartments on the top floor, a travel agency on the third, the doctor on the second and finally the pharmacy. Another thing all doctors had in common was office placement in very near proximity to a pharmacy. I am talking like right outside. His doctor office for the most part was extremely small. And I would like to think there was more than one office, but I only ever saw the one and did not really see much space for another. Therefore it was this one doctor who saw everyone! Talk about a lot of work!

I saw him for muscle aches, ear aches, colds, fevers. Pretty much everything except my eyes and teeth. And he could relay pretty much any and all necessary information to me in English. Additionally he methods were very...western. I am not sure how to say this best, but they were very different from Japan, and very similar to America. He would poke, prod and probe, he would ask if this hurts, and stick things in my ears. In other words, it was a bit invasive, but not overly so, just to a 'normal' amount. He would also go a step beyond American doctors, at least where my ears were concerned (I am very prone to earaches) and would do me the favor of administering a one time dose of the medication on the spot for some instantaneous relief. A total miracle worker.

The medication. Oh the meds. Yes I was probably never perscribed less than three different pills whenever I saw the doctor. And these pills...they would always be very colorful and in different shapes. I swear to you once I had a yellow star pill. But I would always be feeling better the next day. Even if I feel like I might have been over prescribed. And as a result, I would not be taking the pills anymore with in 3-4 days. Oh! and additionally and very helpfully, the pills would always be packaged together for the day that you take it. It was a really nice and neat way of doing it. Like all 5 pills (or however many) would be in their own plastic little package you just rip open and swallow with water. For some reason I found this incredibly convenient. Also the pharmacy was incredibly fast. I never had to wait more than 5 minutes and they would often have a 'gift' for me. Like a hot vitamin drink in the winter (these are pretty popular and come in glass bottles and you can get them at most drug and convenience stores), or packets of tea or gum. That is one thing I really liked about Korea. Their little 'services' that is what they call these little gifts. They do this as a way to earn your favor to ensure your continued patronage, and it is not just pharmacies, but butchers, grocers, boutiques and more.

In Japan it may possibly be the case that all doctors must learn English, but I would never know it. Sure some of the doctors I visit speak a bit of English. Enough to tell me to take the pills two times a day. Nearly all their medical vocabulary might also be in English, or perhaps it is that they learn all the medical vocabulary specifically in English. Bacteria names and things like 'bronchitis' or 'sputum' I don't see in the text books I teach my kids at least. Most doctors will know these things. They even write in English. I am not kidding, they have a fantastic doctor scrawl in their medical records writings. I can't even read it, but I can promise you that it is not Japanese. They will know enough to convey bits of diagnosis and perhaps tell you what you have, but perhaps not how best to take care of it. I think it is because they will write down the key words in their reports, but not exactly connect them together with verbs and propositions and particles and such, which dramatically effects their speaking ability. I was sorely disappointed when I went to the doctor looking for a prescription for my sore throat, and he told me to gargle with salt water...only he did not know how to say 'gargle' or 'salt' (but he did know the word for 'pepper'). This situation did lead to a very amusing demonstration of them preforming the task in front of me so that I would properly understand. However this doctor also told me that sleeping with my mouth open would fix me. -___-

Doctors here are way less invasive. I went to one doctor for a pain in my heel (that I have had since February and it is now September). He looked at my heel and took an x-ray and said to lay off it a bit. No poking, prodding or anything. Did not bother to see where it hurt or really care about my explanation of the pins in my foot. All in all. A terrible doctor I would not want prescribing me anything. If you cannot see the root of the problem nor care to try, then you are not fit to call yourself a physician. Many doctors are like this. They will listen to your explanation. Not touch you at all. Do the least invasion thing (I swear I take x-rays for every little thing!) and give you possibly the worst diagnosis I have ever heard. If my doctor in the United States hadn't moved my foot around for himself he would never know that the tendon was too weak to support physical exercise. If the same thing happened here I am terrified to think of what the outcome would have been. 

Their prescriptions take pretty much forever at the pharmacy. And you get little packages, much like opening a box of Claritin and seeing the individually packaged pills inside, covered by this little foil wrapping. You would think with the time it takes at the pharmacy and with 8 people working there and only 3 people waiting that they must be individually wrapping the pills themselves with the time it takes to get them. I mean at least the people at the CVS pharmacy look busy when you approach them with your prescription and therefore you are much more accepting of their 20 minute wait. But then they have a drive through, and call-ins and people who pick them up at a certain time and then other people who are wandering around the store, but are in reality waiting on their prescription. In Japan there is no store to wander. There is only a white room with seats and if you are lucky a few magazines. And the waiting. Sometimes there is even a T.V. 

Let me talk about their offices. The offices here are more like real hospitals. Not clinics. They are larger and I am certain that each of the ones I have been to have beds in the back for when they administer shots or have patients bedridden for a time. There is still normally only one doctor presiding over things, or at least one at a time. At some hospitals, they have a rotating staff. 

These 'hospitals' are the ones that function more like the clinics we know, but have the inward appearance of hospitals and not clinics. Meaning that there is no consultation room and you get taken directly to the doctor and you get to see all the equipment everywhere. There is a waiting area and then you go beyond a sliding door when your number or name is called and go to face the doc. If you need an x-ray or your blood taken, you go to the separate rooms or floors for that. To me this feels like an American hospital and not a clinic, perhaps because of its size. Though there are true hospitals here as well, with over night patients and surgeries. Sometimes they are of the same building but on the upper floors, other times they at a nearby facility. 

And the last infuriating thing about hospitals, is that they are NOT open all night. Their hours are typically sometime in the morning, with a 4 or 6 hour break during the middle of the day and then open again in the evening perhaps starting around 5 or 6pm and ending around 8 or 9pm. This is largely due to the after work crowd. You see Japanese people are workaholics and don't want to miss their regular work time to go to the hospital, and therefore have the option of going after work. I almost wonder if there was some issue with Japanese workers getting sick and not going to the doctor due to its hours and therefore getting everyone else sick with an end result of doctors everywhere changing their hours for both business and for the benefit of coworkers everywhere. Just a theory. But I digress. Say that you had a mishap late at night, once such that you needed stitches for. Stitches have to occur within the first six hours of the wound (after that, I am not even sure what would happen). But at night the hospitals are closed. I lie. ONE is open. ONE in the entire area for cases such as this. But that one might be an hour away. I am not sure how this works, if it one per every 50,000 citizen  and 2 for every 100,000 or if it is one for 50 square kilometers, or what. But I know there is a very limited number open and once when I was sick in Shikoku, the nearest hospital open was over an hour away and I was in the center of the city. In America, if you have ever been to a hospital at night, you will see nearly every seat taken in the emergency room. Some just have sick children and for others it might be the only time they have off to see a doctor, either way, the seats are filled. Now perhaps Japan offsets this crowd because they have their clinics open in the evenings for these types of people to come by, and therefore they don't have to worry about keeping hospitals open all night. 

And for only one hospital to be open at night... I don't want to think about it and what terrible thing might happen and to have to worry about which hospital it was that was open (as those rotate from week to week). What if there was a fire with victims that were terribly burned and they had to travel AN HOUR to go to a hospital to be treated! There are reasons there are emergency rooms in America. There are reasons they are always open at every hospital. There are cases that need to be treated immediately without needing to worry about open hospitals and forever long journeys.