About 70 percent of medical and welfare facilities with Indonesian nurse and caregiver trainees believe the national qualification exams should include some special treatment for those lacking fluency in Japanese, an Asahi Shimbun survey showed.

Thirty-seven percent of the hospitals and nursing-care facilities said furigana pronunciations for kanji should be added in the exam questions, the most commonly chosen request, while nearly 33 percent said the trainees should be allowed to take the exams in their native language or in English.

Fifty-nine percent said they were "satisfied" or "relatively satisfied" with the specialized job skills of the trainees, but less than 20 percent of those surveyed believe the trainees would be able to pass the exams.

Those who pass their exams are allowed to stay on in Japan, while those who fail must return to Indonesia when their stays expire.

An official at the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare dismissed suggestions that special considerations be made, saying that both Japan and Indonesia agreed that the trainees would "attain the required qualifications in line with Japanese law under the (economic partnership) agreement.

"We have no intention of lowering the standards of the exams," the official said.

The survey was conducted between late September and early October and involved 47 hospitals and 53 nursing-care facilities. Valid responses were obtained from 86 of them.

The first group of 208 Indonesian trainees came to Japan in summer 2008. After receiving basic training, they have been working as novices at hospitals and nursing-care facilities. Nurse trainees have three chances to take the national exam during their maximum three-year stay in Japan.

Caregiver trainees have only one shot at passing their exam during their four-year stay because they are required to have three years of job experience.

Many of the trainees are either qualified to practice in Indonesia or have undergone training there. The difficulty in learning Japanese has been cited as their biggest obstacle in passing the national exams.

Thirty hospitals and 41 nursing-care facilities sought some kind of change to the exams, including eased language standards.

Fifty-eight percent said they hoped the government would extend the permitted stay period to give trainees more opportunities to take the exam.

The most commonly cited reason for seeking a change concerning Japanese language in the exams was that it was difficult for trainees to understand complicated kanji and technical terms used to describe common symptoms, such as bedsores and a patient's posture.

Thirteen respondents, including nine hospitals, said they did not think any special treatment should be given to the trainees, citing the need to maintain fairness or prevent accidents.

Regarding Japanese language proficiency, 56 percent of the respondents said they were either "dissatisfied" or "relatively dissatisfied" with the trainees' abilities, while 45 percent said the trainees lacked ample time to study the language.

They also cited a lack of staff members capable of teaching the Japanese language.(IHT/Asahi: November 3,2009)