Friday morning, when I had breakfast, my attention was fixed on TV. It was a Japanese news program provided by TV Japan(Japanese NHK.) The report that attracted me was about " a handicapped medical doctor-to-be."
According to this report, a law about a prospective doctor's condition was changed five years ago. Before that, people who were blind, deaf, and mute couldn't be doctors in Japan. However, many people thought this law restricted physically handicappeds' possibilities. Finally, the law was abolished five years ago.
A reporter introduced a deaf medical student whose name was Mr. Oishi. He is the first handicapped who passed the exam of a medical school as the handicapped.
My uncle is a professor of a medical school. So, I know how hard graduating from a medical school is even for smart students who don't have any handicap!!
Because they will treat people's lives, they have to study A LOT!! Many medical students drop out before the graduation day.
Mr. Oishi has been doing great so far with enormous effort even though he has been in a harder situation than other students. He is always with a sign language translator, but most of the time, he is required to answer quickly because a doctor has to respond immediately. So, he always tries to read teachers' and classmates' lips.
But sometimes it is really hard for him! Some of them don't speak clearly , and they use many difficult medical terms.
Why does he want to be a doctor? The reporter went to his parents' home. He is from a local city in the southern part of Japan. His father is a physician. The father's hospital was located next to his house, so Mr. Oishi grew up seeing his father's job.
The father knew Mr. Oishi had wanted to be a doctor since he was a child... However, he had never asked his son, " Would you like to be a doctor?" and so on because of the law.
On the other hand, Mr. Oishi's determination to be a doctor hasn't changed. He just believed, " This is the best job for me because I can understand how hard the handicap is! I want to help people who are suffering from handicaps or sickness!!"
He had prepared to go to a medical school, and fortunately, the law was abolished.
Mr. Oishi will have the final doctor's exam for certification a year and a half later. Now, he is working at a public hospital as an intern. Although he is very busy, he has been trying to go to his patients' rooms repeatedly. He comes close to his patients to read their lips, and talk without an interpreter to figure out each patient's situation and feelings like the picture. ( I took this picture when I watched TV. The program is "News Nine" on 22nd, privided by TV Japan, NHK.) His patients said, " We hope he will get his certification because there are not so many doctors who try to understand not only our symptoms, but also our feelings like him."
There is no "special case" of being a doctor, so the only way for him to become a doctor is to get knowledge enoughand skills. Do you know how many handicapped medical students there are in Japan? There are just four, including Mr. Oishi. He is the highest level handicapped intern, so if he pass the exam, he will also be the first one who becomes a real handicapped doctor.
However, there are still many obstacles he has to overcome. Because of his deafness, he needs some special equipment. For example, he got a stethoscope that SHOWS a patient's heart tone and rate as a graph from the United States. ( I guess there are more deaf doctors in the United States, but my English teachers said they had never heard, or met them.) When he performs an operation, he can't read his colleagues' lips. Therefore, he needs to ask them to use sign language or gestures.
However, I think he will overcome his handicap because many doctors, classmates, and patients support him, and especially, he has great perseverance.
Mr. Oishi said, "I want to be a docotor who understand patient's suffering and can judge situations approppriately. I am doing my best day by day. Therefore, I believe my dream will come true someday."I won't forget about him, so I wrote about him on my blog. Most of us tend to give up our dream or determination when it is hard to reach, or when we find many obstacles. However, we should believe we have much more potential than we expected. He may be a "special" person, but I think the similar things would happen to us if we believe our potential.
2 comments:
I wish him good luck.. but my brother is a hard of hearing doctor.
He has had many difficulties at work because his colleagues think that he should not be practising medicine.They were nice at the beginning but there is a lot of competion, so he is always the first to get axed off if there is a training course to attend sponsored by the hospital he works in (he ends up paying for the courses by himself).
He has just had a change of supervisor, who has told him that he doesn't want him to assist in surgery any more because doesn't hear everything that the surgeon says and cannot lip read with the mask.
As a result, he has become very introvertand. Hardly venturing out and zero friends at work.
He was 16 when he started to lose his hearing and he went through medical school on his own (no interpreter just a voice recorder. We(his family) are now wondering if it was a good idea for him to persist although he knew the prejudice of our society.
He is 43 now , and its too late for him to change his career
Actually are there any support groups, websites etc that can help these physically challenged doctors? I vaguely remember, some years ago, there was an article describing a blind pathologist.
On admission to medical school, if a person already has some form of handicap, shouldnt the medical school explain / counsel him/her on the potential restriction on their future practice?
It is very sad to learn about a trained surgeon, having to left his profession after years of training. If he has been advised properly early on in his career, he might have chosen a specialty that is less demanding in terms of hearing, e.g. research based physician, laboratory specialist, forensic etc etc.
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