Japan nursing exam won’t be in English – POEA

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) has clarified that the Japanese licensure examination for nurses will not entirely be translated into English.

The clarification came from a representative of the Japan Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW), according to the POEA, even as foreign applicants are struggling to pass the difficult exam.

According to the POEA, the MHLW is still studying recommendations from focus group discussions (FGD) that it conducted among stakeholders.

Participants in the FGDs include hospital presidents, officials and professors of nursing schools, and other interest groups in the field of nursing, along with the Institute of Human Language.

“Among the suggestions from the said FGDs were to paraphrase certain difficult words or expressions into easier terms, provide Japanese hiragana characters for certain difficult kanji characters, include the subject and object in the Japanese sentence construction, and annotate special nursing terms and names of diseases in English including internationally recognized abbreviations,” the POEA said.

Hiragana and kanji are Japanese writing systems, with the former being used for traditional Japanese words and the latter being ideographs borrowed from Chinese characters.

The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) earlier pushed for intensified language training for Japan-bound nurses and caregivers to give them a better chance of passing the difficult examinations there. (See: DOLE wants intensified Japanese language training for caregivers, nurses)

Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz cited recent reports that no foreign applicant passed last year’s exams and only 1.2 percent of foreign applicants passed the most recent exams.

She said this was due to the difficulty of the examinees in understanding kanji and technical terms written in Japanese.

Maria Luz Talento, Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) in Tokyo officer-in-charge and welfare officer, meanwhile said the language program should focus on communication skills more than simply language skills.

Talento said that while candidate nurses and caregivers are able to speak Japanese, they have problems with oral and written communication with their co-workers and immediate superiors in their place of work.

Filipinos have been hired as nurses and caregivers in Japan under the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement or JPEPA, which critics fear will result in further abuse of Filipino nurses in addition to trampling on the country’s sovereignty. (See: Jpepa to legalize abuses vs Pinoy nurses – CBCP)—Jerrie M. Abella/JV, GMANews.TV