DOLE intensifies language training program to help Filipino nurses find jobs in Japan
Posted on September 4th, 2010
The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) is intensifying their Japanese language training for those wishing to work in Japan. This is part of their initiative to provide more jobs for Filipino nurses there. According to labor secretary Rosalinda Baldoz, there are very few Filipino nurses who are being hired in Japan because of their inability to speak and write the Japanese language.
She said that only 1.2 percent of foreign nurses, which include Filipinos, who are seeking employment in Japan pass the required licensure examination there because of the difficulty in understanding medical terms written in Japanese. To address this problem, the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) in Japan recommended an intensified Japanese language skills program for the Filipino nurses.
Maria Luz Talento, POLO-Tokyo Officer-in-Charge and Welfare Officer Maria Luz Talento, said the program would focus on communication skills more than simply language skills. “Even though candidate nurses and caregivers are able to speak Japanese, which clearly benefits their hospitals and/or welfare institutions, it cannot make up for an inability to communicate verbally and in writing with their co-workers and immediate superiors in their place of work,” she explained.
Talento added that Japanese culture has a specific set of regulations and principles about the proper way or manner of communicating, especially within and across workplaces. She noted that variation in communication method can lead to difficult interpersonal relationships with the place of work, which in most instances, results in unavoidable cross-cultural misunderstandings.
This, she said, necessitates the language and communication skills training program, to redress conflict and prevent miscommunications, but also to obtain jobs and retain them as well. Talento denied the reports that 18 Filipino nurses and caregivers went home after becoming discouraged by their slim chances of passing the national examinations for their professions. She confirmed that many returned home, but mainly because of personal and health reasons.
