I’ve not had the best impression of the few ambulance trips I have had in Japan in the past two decades. Not the least of which had to do with heavy pressure to know my race and nationality as the focus of the conversation. I looked around and it didn’t seem like the ambulances even had much in them. How equipped are they? How well trained are these crews? What level of medical training, and how many years? Serious paramedics? Or just driver crews mostly with minimal training with just a couple months in a class and some C students? Do they have basic equipment such as defibs, epi pens, blood Type tests, blood packs, etc?
I have always wondered…
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They are serious and well trained paramedics but the way Japanese medical law works they cannot perform various life saving services without getting direct orders from a doctor typically over the phone.
“Blood packs” as in spare blood? Do any ambulances in the world do that? I could be wrong but that seems like a good way to waste a lot of blood.
Unless your injuries are life threatening they are basically meat wagons.
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I met a guy doing IT helpdesk work in a Japanese hospital. He was desperate to quit. He would be fixing a PC and they would grab him and order him to go to the ambulance bay to drive the ambulance because there was a staff shortage. He had no medical knowledge and hated it. Ambulance drivers here are more like taxi drivers than frontline healthcare workers.
My brother-in-law is a paramedic, he said most of his job is shuttling old people and drunk people to hospitals.
I suppose it’s better than retrieving the burnt corpses of children from house fires which he’s had to do a few times.
At the end of the day, despite the menial tasks, these guys and gals see horrendous shit and have to deal with it.
Trained to your standards or not.
When my kid was first diagnosed with peanut allergy, we found out that the local ambulance is not equipped with an Epipen and they will just bring you to the hospital. Now 6 years later, we were notified that the ambulance now has trained staff that is capable of administering Epipen during emergencies! Not looking forward to this happening but we are happy to know about this big improvement in their service!!
In urban areas they are quick. They have no choice as to what hospital will do an intake. They have very little in the way of meds—that is up to sensei. They are not chatting with you because they want to make a gaijin friend: they are gauging you (coma, shock, etc.). It is super fucking annoying as they banter on, but that is how they are trained.
The two times I’ve used them so far I found them well equiped compared to other countries ambulances I’ve had the displeasure of needing to use.
And as an FYI no ambulance carries whole blood, they carry saline to keep your BP from dropping to low and type/match you at the hospital.
They won’t send you into bankruptcy for two ibuprofen and an ankle wrap, so that’s a plus compared to my home country.
Wow, this is downvoted … by a lot while it’s a very good and relevant question.
Firstly, if you compare JP to US then JP is superior just because US healthcare is uniquely broken. That being said I would trust a US parametric and hospital more than a Japanese.
Japan health workers do not have a lot of the protections that exist in other developed countries – like the “Good Samaritan” law. So regardless how qualified those paramedics are they may not be protected while trying to help. Also the hospitals can refuse to take you, so those paramedic actually spend a lot of time negotiating with hospitals. Clearly, not good use of their skills.
I can see the ambulances, I can hear them (any part of the day!), drivers wear helmets and they are (probably the only ones!) driving within the speed limit and obeying the traffic law.
They must be good!
/s
Apart from nationality question, they also asked me if I had any drinks that night.