Hospitals

Ok, somthing came up in class the other day about doctors making mistakes in hospitals. My students said "Oh, I bet that happens all the time in the US, huh? Seems like there'd be a lot of mistakes in American hospitals." The other young woman in the class laughed and nodded emphatically.

So I tried to explain how, yes, mistakes are made, but overall US hospitals have a good standing around the world. People come to the US to study medicine. US medical products are sold all over the world. Etc.

In these situations I try not to make a fight out of it. I don't point out that many Japanese doctors study at US hospitalsbut that the opposite isn't true. It's inflammatory.

The rason this became blog-worthy is because japanese newspapers are filled a couple times a week with headlines of major mistakes at hospitals. There is also a famous case of a many people catching AIDS from tainted blood because of such a mistake. But there are certain "facts" that people see here that no number of contradictory examples can shake, and one of those facts is "Japan is a well ordered, safe society and America is a wild, anything goes place with little attention to detail." In other words, because Toyotas are better than Plymouths, the same must be true for all facets of society"

I really grit my teeth when people (in either country) extrapolte these grand theories out of a headline or household product.

So I asked my (hospital mistake) students: why do you think American hospitals are so bad. They said "Well, America allows guns." And that was explanation enough. What they mean is that a place that lets people roam around with guns, certainly can't have the capability to regulate medicine etc.

This is a blog so it doesn't have to be well written. Sorry. But let me just reiterate ideas going on here because they are very typical of the way Japanese see themselves and America:

1. Despite what people see in the news or all around them everyday, they are still convinved that japan is safer than anywhere else, that everythng works and that people like doctors and experts on TV are infallable. (You've really got to see this firsthand. It's kinda like North Koreans saying with a straight face "We had a good grain harvest this year! Praise the leader!"

2. In America anything goes.

I'm not trying to say that my country doesn't have bad hospitals or that there aren't huge problems in health care etc. Just noting the strange images people formulate.