Before he took his own life last year, a young doctor in Japan had worked 100 days in a row and put in more than 200 hours of overtime in a month, according to the country's labor standards inspection office. Relatives of 26-year-old Takashima Shingo, who killed himself after finishing his May 17 shift, say the health system should make changes to prevent deaths from overwork, known as "karoshi" in Japan, CNN reports. The family says the Konan Medical Center in Kobe has made no efforts to prevent deaths like that of Takashima, who was hired in April 2020.
Takashima "had just become a medical specialist and was assigned the same kind of duties as senior doctors, being instructed to write reports and give conference presentations, which led to extremely long working hours," the labor office said in a June ruling, per the Mainichi. The office said the doctor became depressed due to overwork. It said the amount of overtime he worked far exceeded the threshold for workers' compensation for mental disorders. Labor laws were tightened in 2018 but overwork remains a problem in many sectors in Japan, especially health care, reports CNN.
At a press conference last week, Takashima's mother said that in the weeks before his death, her son had become pale. She said he complained that work was too hard and nobody was looking out for him. "My son said he wanted to be a kind doctor," she said. "The hospital may be able to replace any number of doctors, but for the family, he was an irreplaceable treasure." The hospital denies overworking Takashima, arguing that the overtime hours logged include "self-study time," the Asahi Shimbun reports. "We do not have a recognition that we imposed excessive workloads on him," hospital chief Eisei Gu said last week. (More Japan stories.)
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