Foreign patients in emergency departments of Japanese medical facilities

Abstract

Our manuscript is a letter to the article “Factors associated with emergency department length of stay of foreign patients visiting a regional core hospital in Japan.” by Aoki et al. published ahead of print in Acute Medicine and Surgery. We believe that the manuscript by Aoki et al. is the first publication to suggest that linguistics play an important role in the outcomes of foreign patients in Japanese medical facilities, and applaud them for their contribution. However, we also believe that further assessments are required to make their implications more robust. Therefore, in our manuscript, we would like to highlight several criteria that should be included in such studies, derived from studies that have been conducted under similar situations in Japanese medical facilities.

Foreign Patients Visiting the Emergency Department: A Systematic Review of Studies in Japan

“…Some manuscripts reported demographic information of the patients only focused on visitors, but they did not state how they identified patients to be visitors. This would require recording the visa types or other documentations also (12) , (41) , which can also be troublesome for hospitals (42) . Three, the type of insurance should also be reported.…”

Japan Coma Scale and the Disorientation of the Nervous System

“…Furthermore, as the level of consciousness has been noted to alter communication between medical 10 staff and patients, this study may influence studies that are not limited to emergency medicine and 11 epidemiology, such as public health studies focusing on foreign patients requiring linguistic 12 assistance. 2 13 14 However, we also believe that this method requires caution when being utilized, especially A c c e p t e d V e r s i o n emergency department of a Japanese medical facility, we would like to highlight several points that Firstly, under-triage of patients with disorientation of the nervous system may occur. JCS 1 21 has been noticed to include diagnosis that are known to cause disorientation of consciousness similar 22 to patients assessed to be larger than two in JCS.…”

“…Furthermore, as the level of consciousness has been noted to alter communication between medical staff and patients, this study may influence studies that are not limited to emergency medicine and epidemiology, such as public health studies focusing on foreign patients requiring linguistic assistance. 2 …”