Every country has their own version of Nursing Licensure Exam. Before any foreign nurse would be allowed to work as a registered nurse, they need to pass that certain exam. Among those countries that has been giving the most difficult exams are those non-English speaking countries. Foreign nurses need to undergo didactic studies of that country’s language as well as their culture.

Japan is one of those countries. Aside from the fact that the exam is in Nihonggo, the characters are also in hiragana and kanji. Hiragana and kanji are the writing systems in Japan. Hiragana is used in traditional Japanese words while kanji is ideographs borrowed from Chinese characters.

There has been speculations that the exam will be translated in English as foreign nurses in Japan are having a difficult time passing the licensure examinations as evidenced by the extremely low passing rate of previous examinees.

However, this has remained speculations as there is no way that it would be translated into English. The Japan Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) has made it clear that there would no translation of exams yet. However they are conducting focus group discussions (FGD) with its stakeholders and they are still studying the recommendations. The said discussions were participated by hospital presidents, professors, officials of nursing schools and the Institute of Human Language.

Philippines, who happens to be one of the countries that has been providing majority of foreign nurses in a lot of countries including Japan, has strengthen their language training program for their nurses and caregivers bound to that country. In this way, they are giving the nurses and caregivers a higher chance of passing the difficult exam.

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