Countywide : Students Get Close-Up of U.S. Hospital

The 12 Japanese student nurses took off their watches, earrings, bobby pins and other metal objects, then stepped into a room to view a piece of high-tech medical equipment.

Inside the room at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center, the students were amazed to learn about the magnetic resonance imaging system that takes computer-enhanced images of the body.

Student nurse Chizumi Minami, 22, volunteered to climb on top of the scanning table for a mock demonstration of how a patient would receive a brain scan.

Afterward, Minami, through interpreter Satomi Niwayama, said now she will understand how a patient feels when undergoing MRI testing. “It’s lonesome and scary,” she said.

The dozen students, visiting this country for the first time, got the chance Wednesday afternoon to experience firsthand the inner workings of an American hospital.

The group also toured the hospital’s emergency room and CAT scan room, and had a chance to ask questions of hospital staff and emergency room physicians.

The student nurses, ranging in age from 18 to 28, are visiting Orange County to tour medical facilities and gain an understanding about American hospital settings and the kinds of work nurses here perform.

Cheryl Haag, a group representative for EF Interstudy, a nonprofit organization that is coordinating the students’ three-week visit, said they have toured UCI Medical Center and attended a lecture on nursing practices in America.

Today they are scheduled to visit the Irvine Fire Department to learn about emergency and paramedic procedures.

The nurses will also visit UCLA Medical Center, attend a lecture on AIDS on the UC Irvine campus and visit a hospice for AIDS patients in Laguna Beach, Haag said. They will also attend a baseball game, shop at South Coast Plaza and visit area tourist attractions.

Because they speak little or no English, Haag said, the students, staying in dorms at UCI, are being tutored in English.

During their tour of Fountain Valley’s hospital, the student nurses said they noticed some differences between working conditions here and the hospitals in Japan.

In Japan, nurses work longer hours and usually have only one day off a week, the students said.

Student Sae Takemura, 28, said she was impressed at how much larger patients’ rooms are in this country compared to those in Japanese hospitals.

“It looks comfortable for the patient,” she said through the interpreter.

The students also said the hospitals here are cleaner and larger and that doctors and nurses seem to be more equal.

Minami said she was surprised to learn that not every American has health insurance and that those who do pay a lot. In her country, she said, “everybody has health insurance.”

When asked if she would like to be a nurse in America, Minami said she’d welcome the opportunity to learn about advanced medical techniques.

But, she added, she wouldn’t want to stay. “I would want to go back home,” she said.