Pictured above is Memorial Health Certified Family Nurse Practitioner Sean Ono Gill in front of the hospital’s new Japanese Clinic. Gill, who speaks Japanese, was instrumental in helping create the clinic which allows Honda employees to interact with a health service provider in their native language. Memorial has added Japanese lettering to some of its signs to help workers find their way to the clinic.
(Photo submitted)
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As he begins to answer questions about a new clinic at Memorial Health, Certified Family Nurse Practitioner Sean Ono Gill’s statements brought a sheepish quiet over the room.
He described the new program for about 45 seconds before pausing and looking around the room. It was clear that his message wasn’t being understood.
But the confusion was intentional, because he was speaking in Japanese.
“So basically, that’s how Japanese people feel,” Gill said. “Here is a place they don’t know and then the language they don’t speak for and then they’re shown a bunch of stuff that they don’t (understand).”
Gill was the driving force behind the new Memorial Family Medicine Japanese Clinic. The clinic, located inside entrance G of the hospital, is open for appointments on Thursday mornings and allows patients to converse with Gill in their native language.
Other language barriers at Memorial are handled with a video translation service.
The clinic is currently focused on the Japanese population employed by Honda but could grow in the future to serve other Japanese-speaking patients.
Honda has had a relationship with Memorial for more than three decades, providing pre-employment physicals.
The hospital is also contracted to assist Honda’s Japanese employee physicals, which are mandated annually by that country’s government. Gill explained that the annual physicals are mandated because of the work culture in Japan.
“People kind of are workaholics, (they) work themselves to death, and also there is a very high suicide rate,” Gill explained. “And so for that purpose, the government mandates, everyone has to have a physical.”
But Memorial had trouble making lasting connections with the Japanese expats.
Memorial Director of Physician Practices Tonia Harper explained that most of Honda’s Japanese executives would wait until they returned home to schedule their annual physicals. Travel restrictions around the COVID pandemic allowed the health system to make inroads with the Honda top executives by providing the annual physicals.
But Memorial found that if the physicals uncovered any issues, such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol, the patients never sought remedies.
“We’d say, ‘Follow up with your primary care (doctor)’ and they don’t have one,” Gill said. “So I thought this would be a good opportunity to just, like kind of take out the middleman.”
Gill explained that there is an existing clinic for Japanese-speaking people in Dublin, which has the greatest Japanese population density in the state, but that facility does not accept insurance of any kind. Basically, the employees would wait until they returned to Japan to seek treatment.
That’s where Gill entered the picture. Hired in October in Memorial’s occupational health service line, he learned the language from his Japanese mother.
“She never spoke English to me, basically,” Gill said. “Just absolutely refused to until I had learned (Japanese).”
Gill said the ability to speak Japanese with a health care professional is a big hurdle to clear in making them comfortable with a provider, but more goes into it. He said just getting to the right area of the hospital without getting lost can be a challenge without Japanese language signs. The hospital has some signage in place with directions in Japanese.
He said Japanese people can be reticent to even admit they are sick because they don’t like to complain or be a burden.
“They wouldn’t come out and say if there’s anything wrong, because they don’t want to worry the family about their health,” Gill said. “So, a lot of times they’ll just kind of ignore issues.”
He said even if they do come to him with issues, they are hesitant to seek the follow-up care they need.
“Japanese are also very non-confrontational,” Gill said. “So, you really have to advocate for them.”
Of the 300 or so annual physicals the hospital provides for Honda, a large percentage of those do not have primary providers in the United States. Memorial officials hope to change that with a provider that can fluently speak their language, even if he might not look the part.
“I don’t look Japanese,” Gill said. “So, for someone who doesn’t look Japanese, I speak really, really good Japanese.”
The clinic currently only handles Honda workers, but could expand to work with the families of those employees or, eventually, Japanese employees from Honda suppliers.
Harper said young program is already gaining attention from executives within the automaker and word of the Japanese-speaking provider are beginning to spread.
Gill said patients sometimes visit the clinic and try to explain a medical issue with limited control of the English language. When Gill responds in Japanese they show immediate relief.
One recent patient also hinted that the Memorial clinic was gaining attention. After he began to speak to the man in Japanese, he said, “Oh, so the rumors are true,” Gill recalled.