Cross-cultural communication （51）　

51） A troublesome health checkup
I have had many health checkups for job applications and regular health checkups at companies. If I looked clearly healthy and all the specified test items were in the normal range, I would be simply marked as normal. This has never caused any problems. However, this common sense was overturned once.

This was in 2010. We received a request to carry out a health checkup for a female flight attendant (CA) from a certain Middle Eastern oil-producing country who was applying for a job with an airline company. The applicant had already passed the interview stage, so all that was left was the health checkup, so we readily accepted the request. However, the woman who came to my office had a downcast look on her face. When I asked her about the situation, she told me that she had already had medical certificates written for her by two different medical institutions, but that the company had not accepted them. She had found our website and thought I would be familiar with overseas situations, so she had come to see us.

When I saw the medical certificate form, it was written in proper English and the examination items were standard. I couldn't understand why it had been rejected. I examined her in the usual way, taking a blood sample and a chest X-ray. After a few days, when all the results were ready, I wrote up the medical certificate and had it sent to her by post. As I expected, a complaint came back to me by email. They said that a normal chest X-ray result was not enough. It said that I had to judge it as normal, with the measurement coefficient for scoliosis attached. I had written hundreds of medical certificates for people both in Japan and overseas, but this was the first time I had been told something like this. So I wrote it as they had asked and sent it off, and this time they said I had to check the blood test items that had not been specified. Thereofor, I also complied with that request. I think I repeated the same thing four or five times. Almost a month after the first visit to the hospital, she received a notice of employment.

Almost a year later, I received a request for a medical examination from another successful applicant for the same airline company. Of course, she consulted with the person who had made the request a year earlier and asked about Kido Clinic. In her case, the doctor she first saw had become angry at the second ridiculous complaint and refused the request, saying that he could no longer write the report. Well, it is quite likely that a normal doctor (not necessarily a Japanese doctor, but a doctor from any country) would do the same.

I, myself had the experience of the previous time, so in addition to the standard medical certificate, I also attached a formal, original medical certificate stating “It is to certify that~”, and of course, I also collected all the blood samples that were requested after the previous time. This time, it was approved on the first try.

If you read between the lines, it might be that they are deliberately causing trouble to see how you handle it. However, from the way I feel about it, I think the doctor in charge at that airline company is simply an authoritarian who lacks common sense. In response to the thank-you emails from the two clients, I sent them a message of encouragement saying, “Since you had so much trouble even before you left, you can expect to have quite a lot of difficulties there. But you will become stronger each time you solve one of them. Please become the world's strongest CA.”

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