Atrium Health Navicent and Mercer University School of Medicine welcome Kurobe City Hospital Delegation for its 20th year to Macon

“From changing the perspective, we see the same issues, but from the different perspective, which it's very important for most of us,” said Ryosuke Komiya, translating for Dr. Hirokazu Tsuji of the Kurobe City Hospital Delegation.

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – Atrium Health Navicent and Mercer University School of Medicine welcome Kurobe City Hospital Delegation for its 20th year to Macon.

According to a press release this visit is part of a unique medical exchange rooted in a 47 year sister city partnership between Macon-Bibb County and Kurobe, Japan. That relationship was established in 1977 with the support of YKK and various medical personnel have taken turns visiting each other’s countries and learning new techniques over the years since 2003.

“From changing the perspective, we see the same issues, but from the different perspective, which it’s very important for most of us,” said Ryosuke Komiya, translating for Dr. Hirokazu Tsuji of the Kurobe City Hospital Delegation.

“Compared to Japan it’s much more condensed. So, we have a much more smaller system,”

“Health care personnel from Japan come here to experience the American way as it would be a stimulus for them which they can bring back to Japan to further improve the medical care there,” he said.

“The way that it influences our residents is that they get to experience another culture when the Kurobe doctors visit here and talk to them about their practices in Japan and then we also send medical residents over to Japan and they also get to work within the hospital. So it’s a great exchange of medical culture and best practice,” said Cyndey Busbee, Chief of Staff Atrium Health Navicent.

“The great thing about the currency exchange, for us, it allows us to actually learn more about global health, particularly after the pandemic. You know, it was really important that we were exposed to other cultures and how they were dealing with the pandemic in other parts of the world, as well as for our residents when they go there. It teaches them about inclusive medicine, so that when we are practicing in the United States, that we’re very sensitive to other cultures and what might be acceptable in their home countries,”

“So what we do is, we actually have it scheduled in different flights. We always exchange every year and so in this case, we’ll have two medical providers who will go to Japan along with two nurses and then we will have medical residents and administrators who come from Kurobe here every year. They go at different times of the year depending on the seasons, but the weather in Kurobe is very similar to ours and so this is a good time of year to actually go back and forth to Japan,”

“When the exchange happens, they’re mostly in what we call didactic, which is learning. So we will present cases, our physicians, when they go to Kurobe, they actually talk about difficult cases and they’re really encouraged to bring materials and documents about those cases so that the Japanese residents can learn about ours, as well as when the residents come here to the United States. They mostly spend time in observation, not as much in lectures. The classrooms are very different in Kurobe, but neither of the practitioners are practicing on patients. They are actually just in the learning environment,” she said.