A hospital in Akashi, Hyogo Prefecture, is pioneering a new way of working that it hopes will reverse the high turnover rate of nursing staff in Japan.
The Onishi Neurological Center organizes nurses into groups of four, allowing them to take three months of paid vacation in turn. This allows the medical center to pay the nurses lower bonuses, so their total wages equal that for three full-time nurses.
Hideyuki Onishi, 66, director of the hospital, introduced the flexible working style after hearing about the difficulties faced by Japanese nursing volunteers working abroad through Child Doctor Japan, an Osaka-based nonprofit organization offering free medical assistance to children in Africa.