Roent-gen gishi trauma (5-16-10)

As my hospital’s annual health check-ups are starting this week, on the list are the names, professions and ages of my colleagues. Although my career in the hospital yet exceeds a decade, I usually don’t have unnecessary communication with them: a few young (female) nurses and maybe-seven male caregivers, most of the latter are over thirty, amongst other predominant entries aged over fifty. Many on the list are just colleagues to me. Yet when those caregivers come to the focus of attention, the urgently needed profession in aging Japan, all of them are unmarried (or there might be an exception).

While it would be intrusive to ask about the salaries of caregivers, some TV programs suggested the need of raising them to be fairly worth strenuous work.

Japan with its aging population sure will need more caregivers. However, a somewhat stigmatic image as blue-collar given to the profession, however true the reputation is, might be prone to make male caregivers unpopular to ladies. What women with university degrees would designate these guys as boyfriends? In particular, the diplomas of prestigious universities tend to mean a high status. The situation seems tough to male caregivers as Japan today sees half of high school grads advance to university with no noticeable gender bias in the number of new students. The national effort to produce more caregivers is thus likely hitting a snag in the convolution of a higher demand for them, the raised academic level of Japan and the traditional manners of paying respect to the opposite gender.

On a recent Friday, a sales rep of Fujifilm dropped into the X-ray section of which I am in charge and we shared time. The rep who appeared aged around sixty made a little stunned face and pointed to a name card on my chest, which described my occupation as “Roent-gen gishi”, as a gishi meant a technician. He said with his usual a bit raucous voice: “Does your hospital still use this expression?”

The question immediately had me recall the conversion from the previous “the law for shinryo-X-sen gishi” to “the law for shinryo-hoshasen gishi,” which also revised the official way of calling the occupation. (Both X-sen and hoshasen means X-rays as a type of radiation, while shinryo means medical.) According to the revision, a Roent-gen gishi is yet an obsolete title in practice.

(A parenthetical piece of knowledge: To be different from the US, Japan doesn’t differentiate between X-ray technicians and radiologists. It’s said that in the US the latter has more things to do with diagnosis.)

“Team-iryo” is a term which means when a doctor/doctors and co-medicals collaborate together to treat a patient. Under this principle, professionals from each section are supposed to have specific quotas and meet them. If the team harmonizes well as a whole, the patient will be served with treatment of quality and each professional will be proud of the profession more highly. After giving the successful treatment, the medical staff should have increased motivation to deal with another patient while the quality of their service can be further improved by making and receiving feedback.

Before changing its name in 1968, X-sen gishi, commonly called Roent-gen gishi in society, was not as respectful a profession as it is today. According to information I have gathered since I began being involved with this specific category about radiation, X-sen gishi worked at the disposal of doctors: They were supposed to merely follow doctors’ instructions as precisely as possible. In addition, the Fujifilm rep touched on the principles of nurses in which sectors in the medical field consisted of just “doctors, nurses, and others.” The position of Roent-gen gishi was incorporated into the third group.

However, generally speaking, this status of X-ray technicians, which was not totally irrelevant to servitude, is no longer in place.

Thanks to their passion which has been passed down from one generation to another toward serving more advanced medical exams and treatments since Roent-gen, the physicist, produced and detected X-rays in 1895, now the certificate enables the area of their work to cover CT and MRI scans, fluoroscopy, ultrasound, mammography, fundoscopy, radiation and isotopes. Furthermore, following the case of nurses, those proficiency tests have been set to give classifications in each kind of exams or treatment, like radiation therapy. For example, there are special users of CT scanners under the system. One of the purposes of setting up the classification system may have been providing a medical facility with higher credibility with the presence of a classified technician. Society should feel easier as they benefit from medical facilities, the quality of each of whose services has been improved.

As for how the related education system has changed, universities with X-ray majors have flourished in number, in accordance with the national trend in the number of universities. There were eleven of them a decade ago, but they have multiplied to twenty-five according to a list released in 2007. Now, the door is open more widely for wannabe X-ray technicians.

Certainly, doctors and scientists are front-runners to move the overall quality of medical treatment forward, leading each new generation. At the same time, only the largest hospitals can apply cutting-edge medical approaches to difficult diseases. Yet still, workers in smaller medical institutions should keep obliged to improve their routines by the day.

The Fujifilm rep brought up an anecdote: An elderly woman could not reach an X-ray section in a university hospital because there were no signs with Roent-gen midway. C’mon, if I were in the hospital, my name card would have helped her!

I also found my name, age, 35, and profession, Roent-gen gishi, on the list for health check-ups. I, however, in no time tried to deny the reality, thinking, “I am different from those caregivers!”

Objectively speaking, although my profession and working environment are not the same as theirs, differences may not be as much as I believe.

Outside the hospital, there are many cool men appealing a higher salary and a higher status than mine. When a man is perceived by women to be capable enough to guarantee the future of someone out of them, he is closer to marriage than the have-nots are.

Even though a trait of human beings has developed this formula in mating, should it not yet become out of fashion? I actually don’t take this change as realistic, but if there is a successful couple with reversed balance in status--the woman’s is higher than the man’s--their miraculous case may serve as a meaningful influence on the nation.