Increasing Demand for Inbound Medical Tourism; Hoping to Build an Understanding of Working with Foreigners

Q.Why did your company decide to take on interns? What did you aim to achieve?

We are a medical institution that provides preventative medicine (comprehensive medical check-ups) and cutting-edge medical treatments (cancer immunotherapy). We have worked hard to provide the very best in medical services based on the ideal of "medical treatment as the supreme service business," as laid out for us by our founder. Our hospital, which mainly provides treatments not covered by health insurance, had felt the necessity of further enhancing our medical services and expanding our businesses in order to continue our business in the Nara area, an area that will be aging and experiencing depopulation. That is why we began accepting inbound medical tourism from overseas and launched services for China beginning several years ago. Additionally, when we provided technology for immunotherapy to the Hanoi Medical University in Vietnam we used the opportunity to launch a local subsidiary and we have also begun services for Vietnam. An awareness of business development overseas has taken root among management ranks, but our Japanese staff still only have a vague sense of this and so we wanted to build an understanding for cooperating with foreigners by making use of this internship.

Rotating Through All Sections and Learning Together Through Cooperation

Q.What kind of internship did you run? What difficulties did you face and how did you resolve them?

Since the intern herself hoped to work at a Japanese company in the future, and because we wanted to deepen the understanding of the staff towards foreign cultures and diversity, we had her rotate through all of the sections, spending one week at a time in each (sales, reception, nursing, office work, laboratory testing, the radiology department, and nursing facilities inspection). We had the intern honestly state her perspective before and after her activities in each section and used her perspective for insights to improve our work. We also had her handle customers, translate, and interpret when medical tourists came from Vietnam, as well as interact with the Hanoi subsidiary. What the staff had to understand was that "Cooperating with foreigners means learning myself." The intern held lectures on Vietnamese and introduced Vietnamese cuisine in order to deepen the staff's understanding of Vietnam. At first the intern was sometimes perplexed by her health management and communication, but by following along with all of the staff to provide care she overcame this. We were also interviewed by Vietnamese television during the internship and it was a very significant experience.

Discussions of Vietnamese Medicine; Increased Consciousness of Overseas Expansion for the Staff

Q.Comparing before and after the internship, what effects did it have on you, your employees, or your organization?

The staff had no problems accepting the intern since we have full-time Chinese staff at our institution and we had taken on Vietnamese employees for a short period for the purpose of training staff for the Hanoi subsidiary, and a positive attitude of trying learn about the culture and values of Vietnam from the intern was arose naturally. Additionally, by placing the intern in a system for rotating through all the sections, we believe we were able to create an understanding among our staff of our institution's policy on full-on development in Vietnam. We had the intern examine the differences in comprehensive medical check-ups and different ways of thinking about preventative medicine and medical treatment in Japan and Vietnam and the intern discussed these issues with the staff. This was a good opportunity for the staff to learn about the current state of medicine in Vietnam. Opinions were exchanged about what form exam items should take when making comprehensive medical examinations in Vietnam going forward, how to provide hospitality to medical tourists from Vietnam in order to satisfy them, and what kind of seasonings and food Vietnamese tourists would like in the hospital and everyone gained an awareness of the issues.