Important things that dentists in Chiba prepare for dental checkups at health and welfare centers and schools
Hello
This is Harada from Harada Dental Clinic in Chiba City.
It’s gotten really cold and snowy in the north.
Time flies.
This year, I was on duty at the health and welfare center to check up on 1.5-year-olds and 3-year-olds, and at the school where I am the school dentist.
In fact, these checkups often last more than two hours without a break.
I’m grateful to the dental hygienists and school teachers who assist me.
In schools, the air conditioning is not as good as at health and welfare centers, and the teachers who assist are often busy, so we often don’t have a toilet break.
It would be more efficient to take a five-minute break in between work rather than working for two or three hours straight, but it’s difficult to get everyone to accept this way of thinking.
So starting this year, I’ve decided to make sure to wear something.
It’s a urine pad.
Fortunately, I have never had to urinate in it, but it is very comforting mentally.
The need to urinate is probably influenced by psychological factors as well.
Another time I wear pads is when I fly internationally.
The number of passengers has increased recently, and the airport itself is very crowded.
Even if the plane departs on time, it is normal to have to wait at the tarmac for more than 30 minutes.
Even after the plane has leveled off, Japanese airlines are particularly strict, and you are not allowed to get up to go to the toilet while the seat belt sign is on.
In this regard, American airlines are relatively lenient, and if you go to the toilet while the seat belt sign is on and the plane suddenly shakes and you get injured, it may be your own responsibility.
In fact, once the plane has leveled off, the crew prepares the meal service even if the seat belt sign is on.
As has already been reported, the problem of urinary incontinence is quite serious for those involved, and there have been cases of train drivers unable to hold it in in the cab and leaking large amounts, and trains being delayed because they stopped at the toilet at an intermediate station.
In fact, the pads seem to be selling quite well to men in their 30s as well.
Rugby players have been wearing disposable diapers for a long time, so urinary incontinence itself is nothing to be embarrassed about.
I hope that by writing about it here, many people will be able to wear pads as a countermeasure and go about their work and lives as normal.
Is visiting a dentist in Chiba multiple times just to earn points?
Hello
This is Harada from Harada Dental Clinic in Chiba City.
There is not much time left this year.
It was a year with many good things.
The Harada family avoids making their first visit to a shrine when there are many people at the beginning of the year,
so as usual, they visit a shrine near their home at the end of the year.
I recently found an interesting article.
It was on Yahoo news, and it was an article from December 11, 2024 titled “Is visiting a dentist multiple times to treat one tooth just to earn points for the dentist’s insurance?”
The article itself was interesting, but the comments were also numerous and well-written.
In reality, it is unthinkable that a patient would come to the clinic multiple times to earn points.
However, I thought it was important to know that some ordinary people think like this.
I immediately had all the staff at our clinic, including dentists, dental hygienists, treatment coordinators, receptionists, etc., read it.
Treatment and procedures at dental clinics are of course important, but I thought it was very important to always listen to what ordinary people think about dentistry.
公務員は英語で public servant と言いますが、もっとコスト意識と財務について関心を持ってほしいですね。
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Did you default on your medical bills at a dentist in Chiba?
Hello
This is Harada from Harada Dental Clinic in Chiba City.
I received some good news in early November.
The baseball team I was rooting for became Japan’s best team.
It’s been 26 years since 1998.
It’s great that they became Japan’s best team, but to be honest,
I was much happier in 1998.
That’s because they had batters and pitchers with a lot of personality, and absolute relievers and closers, and they came in first place in the regular season without question.
This time, the regular season was a series of disappointing games, so it doesn’t really feel right to say they became Japan’s best team.
I hope they win both the regular season and the postseason next year.
However, it was a season full of learnings throughout the year.
I was reminded that I must always remain humble.
☆ The other day, my friend’s father collapsed and was rushed to the hospital.
He told me the story in detail.
I thought it was very interesting, so I’d like to share it with you.
His father had chest pains and was unable to move, so he was rushed to the emergency center in the city.
Fortunately, when my friend rushed over, his condition had stabilized,
but the problem was when it came to paying the bill.
The center doesn’t do the billing on the spot, but rather sends you a bill later and you transfer the payment.
Because it’s an emergency, some people don’t have their health insurance card, so they may not be able to check their health insurance card on the spot.
In such cases, the rule for health insurance treatment is that you pay the full medical fee once, and then once they check your health insurance card, they refund the amount minus the patient’s copayment.
People who don’t have a health insurance card must verify their identity in some way.
Normally, you would verify their identity with a driver’s license or a photo ID such as a My Number card.
If the person is elderly or doesn’t have anything, wouldn’t it be normal to verify the identity of the person accompanying them?
However, at that center (run by Chiba prefecture), all identity verification is done by self-reporting.
In fact, when the father was brought in, he gave the wrong date of birth, but for a while he was registered as a patient with that wrong date.
Apparently he had his health insurance card, but when he tried to leave the center, he was not asked to show it, and was asked to send a copy of the card later.
No, no, using a copy to verify identity is also against the rules.
When an insurance card expires, it must be returned, but copies remain forever.
In this situation, for example, if a foreigner without a Japanese health insurance card is brought in by ambulance,
they can self-report any number of false addresses, and it is easy to not be able to recover medical expenses.
If it were a private hospital, they would probably think about the system more seriously, but perhaps because it is run by the prefecture and the staff working there do not have to pay for it themselves, it is a pretty lax system when you think about it.
The hospital’s facilities themselves are impressive, but this is not going to improve the prefecture’s finances.
Civil servants are called public servants in English, but I wish they would be more cost-conscious and concerned about finances.
Dentists in Chiba were prescribing too many antibiotics
Hello
This is Harada from Harada Dental Clinic in Chiba City.
There are only 10 days left in October, but the temperature continues to exceed 25 degrees.
We removed the air conditioner early from one room due to clinic renovation,
but we are managing to beat the heat with an electric fan.
About 20 years ago, many doctors prescribed antibiotics when you had a cold.
Some patients actually actively requested that they be prescribed antibiotics.
In fact, several doctors appeared on a TV program and said that it was meaningful to prescribe antibiotics when you had a cold.
The reason was to prevent pneumonia after catching a cold! ?
I saw their expressions, and I thought they were making a pretty lame excuse.
At the ENT clinic that I sometimes visit now, there is a sign in the waiting room that says, “We do not prescribe antibiotics for colds.”
Antibiotics are effective when you have an infection.
However, prescribing antibiotics unnecessarily is a problem because it can lead to resistance, meaning they no longer work when needed.
In fact, doctors aren’t the only ones prescribing antibiotics unnecessarily.
Dentists used to prescribe antibiotics quite unnecessarily as well.
It has been common practice to prescribe antibiotics even for a minor tooth extraction.
About 20 years ago, I had the opportunity to listen to a lecture by a famous dentist who studied abroad in Sweden.
He said that at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden (the world’s leading university for periodontology),
they do not prescribe antibiotics even for removing sideways wisdom teeth,
because it is much more important to thoroughly clean the inside of the mouth before surgery and disinfect the area around the mouth to reduce the number of bacteria.
This is a natural thing to do.
For example, if you eat with your bare hands after using the toilet, you would normally wash your hands after using the toilet.
You would not normally take an antibiotic with dirty hands to prevent stomach pain caused by infection and then stuff your cheeks with rice balls by hand.
However, it has been common practice for dentists to prescribe a set of antibiotics, painkillers, and stomach medicines after a tooth extraction.
With the recent medicine shortage, one pharmacy has in fact been receiving a large number of penicillin prescriptions from dentists,
and there are reports that some penicillin preparations have run out of stock.
If dentists do prescribe antibiotics, they will only do so to people with diabetes or other conditions that are vulnerable to infection.
Also, unlike painkillers, antibiotics cannot be taken only when you are in pain.
The correct way to take medicine is to finish it off as prescribed.
Are Chiba dentists introducing automatic reception to reduce staff?
Hello
This is Harada from Harada Dental Clinic in Chiba City.
On Friday, October 4th, the temperature exceeded 30 degrees, and I was surprised at what was going to happen, but it finally feels like autumn.
The clinic is currently being renovated, and construction is progressing every day with the aim of reopening in August 2025.
In fact, we are planning to install automatic reception.
Returning patients check in by holding their smartphone app over the machine, and the payment after treatment is also settled by credit card on their own smartphone app.
When I mentioned this to an American teacher in an English conversation lesson the other day, he asked me if the purpose was to reduce staff. I thought that it was a typical American perspective that focuses on money.
Recently, family restaurants such as Gusto and Saizeriya have been implementing automatic payment.
When paying, instead of a staff member, you hold a barcode over the machine and select your payment method from credit card, cash, QR payment, SUICA, etc.
At Gusto, orders are placed through a touch panel, the food is served by a robot, and customers place the food brought by the robot on their table themselves.
Ordering through a touch panel has become the norm even at conveyor-belt sushi restaurants.
I imagine restaurants are also struggling with a labor shortage.
The restaurant itself is busy with families and groups.
However, he lamented that Choshimaru near Chiba Station is different and more like a library.
Most of the customers are on business, or come alone.
They order on the touch panel in front of them, and when the food arrives, they eat in silence, pay, and leave.
Not a word is spoken during this time.
His ideal restaurant might be a typical American restaurant, where a waiter comes to take the order, asks about the food, and when the food arrives, the customer chats with his companions, sometimes with the customer at the next table, and jokes with the waiter when paying.
I’ve made a long introduction, but the reason our clinic has automated reception is not to reduce staff.
The purpose is to reduce the waiting time at reception and the waiting time after treatment to pay.
The idea is to have machines do things that don’t need to be handled by humans.
We use that freed time to explain things to patients and follow up with them.
Reception staff will assist first-time patients.
We use a variety of digital systems for treatment and regular management.
A digital scanner is used to take impressions for mouthpiece orthodontics,
and the Swiss company EMS’ Airflow, which cleans the inside of the mouth, is operated with a cordless foot pedal using Bluetooth, so there is less unnecessary wiring.
The reservation system is linked to electronic medical records, X-ray images, and intraoral photographs.
However, it is humans who perform the treatment and surgery, and it is humans, not robots, who explain things until the patient is satisfied.
This will never be replaced by robots.
In conclusion, we will introduce an automatic reception desk and increase the number of staff.
This will have benefits for both patients and employees.
The benefit for patients is that, as mentioned earlier, waiting times will be shortened.
In fact, on the day I am writing this, eight staff members are on paid leave, and one left early before noon due to a sudden illness in his child. Even so, the number of patients exceeds 120, and the clinic is operating normally.
This is something that would not be possible in a clinic with only 10 staff members.
A big benefit for working people is that you can take paid leave almost as often as you request, and even if you have to take time off suddenly for some reason you don’t have to cause any more trouble to other staff than necessary.
To get more specific, there’s also a rule that says you don’t have to buy souvenirs for staff if you use paid leave to go on a trip.
In fact, many staff members say that the thought of buying souvenirs for 40 people irritates them.
However, at our clinic, such consideration is absolutely unnecessary.
Our stance is that you should enjoy your own time on time off, and that there is no need to be overly considerate of others, so the office doesn’t end up overflowing with souvenirs from local areas.
Some staff members even avoid sugar, wheat, and vegetable oils.
This is how we enjoy providing medical care every day.
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Les dentistes de Chiba introduisent-ils une réception automatique pour réduire le personnel ?
Bonjour
Je suis Harada de la clinique dentaire Harada de la ville de Chiba.
Le vendredi 4 octobre, la température a dépassé les 30 degrés et j’ai été surpris de ce qui allait se passer, mais on a enfin l’impression que c’est l’automne.
La clinique est actuellement en cours de rénovation et les travaux progressent chaque jour dans le but de rouvrir en août 2025.
En fait, nous prévoyons d’installer une réception automatique.
Les patients qui reviennent s’enregistrent en tenant leur application pour smartphone au-dessus de la machine, et le paiement après le traitement est également réglé par carte de crédit sur leur propre application pour smartphone.
Lorsque j’en ai parlé à un professeur américain lors d’un cours de conversation en anglais l’autre jour, il m’a demandé si le but était de réduire le personnel. J’ai pensé que c’était une perspective américaine typique qui se concentre sur l’argent.
Récemment, des restaurants familiaux tels que Gusto et Saizeriya ont mis en place le paiement automatique.
Au moment de payer, au lieu d’un membre du personnel, vous tenez un code-barres au-dessus de la machine et sélectionnez votre mode de paiement parmi carte de crédit, espèces, paiement par QR code, SUICA, etc.
Chez Gusto, les commandes sont passées via un écran tactile, la nourriture est servie par un robot et les clients placent eux-mêmes la nourriture apportée par le robot sur leur table.
La commande via un écran tactile est devenue la norme, même dans les restaurants de sushis à tapis roulant.
J’imagine que les restaurants sont également aux prises avec une pénurie de main-d’œuvre.
Le restaurant lui-même est très fréquenté par les familles et les groupes.
Cependant, il a déploré que Choshimaru, près de la gare de Chiba, soit différent et ressemble davantage à une bibliothèque.
La plupart des clients sont en déplacement professionnel ou viennent seuls.
Ils commandent sur l’écran tactile devant eux et lorsque la nourriture arrive, ils mangent en silence, paient et partent.
Pas un mot n’est prononcé pendant ce temps.
Son restaurant idéal pourrait être un restaurant américain typique, où un serveur vient prendre la commande, pose des questions sur la nourriture et lorsque la nourriture arrive, le client discute avec ses compagnons, parfois avec le client de la table voisine, et plaisante avec le serveur au moment de payer.
J’ai fait une longue présentation, mais la raison pour laquelle notre clinique a automatisé la réception n’est pas de réduire le personnel.
Le but est de réduire le temps d’attente à la réception et le temps d’attente après le traitement pour payer.
L’idée est de faire en sorte que les machines fassent des choses qui n’ont pas besoin d’être effectuées par des humains.
Nous utilisons ce temps libéré pour expliquer les choses aux patients et assurer le suivi avec eux.
Le personnel de la réception aidera les nouveaux patients.
Nous utilisons différents systèmes numériques pour le traitement et la gestion courante.
Un scanner numérique est utilisé pour prendre les empreintes pour l’orthodontie buccale,
et le Airflow de la société suisse EMS, qui nettoie l’intérieur de la bouche, fonctionne avec une pédale sans fil via Bluetooth, ce qui réduit les câbles inutiles.
Le système de réservation est lié aux dossiers médicaux électroniques, aux images radiographiques et aux photographies intrabuccales.
Cependant, ce sont des humains qui effectuent le traitement et l’opération, et ce sont des humains, et non des robots, qui expliquent les choses jusqu’à ce que le patient soit satisfait.
Ce système ne sera jamais remplacé par des robots.
En conclusion, nous allons mettre en place un bureau d’accueil automatique et augmenter le nombre de personnel.
Cela aura des avantages pour les patients et les employés.
L’avantage pour les patients est que, comme mentionné précédemment, les temps d’attente seront réduits.
En fait, le jour où j’écris ces lignes, huit membres du personnel sont en congé payé et un est parti tôt avant midi en raison d’une maladie soudaine de son enfant. Malgré cela, le nombre de patients dépasse 120 et la clinique fonctionne normalement.
Ce serait impossible dans une clinique avec seulement 10 employés.
Un grand avantage pour les travailleurs est que vous pouvez prendre des congés payés presque aussi souvent que vous le souhaitez, et même si vous devez prendre un congé soudainement pour une raison quelconque, vous n’avez pas à causer plus de problèmes aux autres employés que nécessaire.
Pour être plus précis, il existe également une règle qui stipule que vous n’êtes pas obligé d’acheter des souvenirs pour le personnel si vous utilisez vos congés payés pour partir en voyage.
En fait, de nombreux membres du personnel disent que l’idée d’acheter des souvenirs pour 40 personnes les irrite.
Cependant, dans notre clinique, une telle considération est absolument inutile.
Nous pensons que vous devez profiter de votre temps libre et qu’il n’est pas nécessaire d’être trop prévenant envers les autres, afin que le bureau ne finisse pas par déborder de souvenirs des environs.
Certains membres du personnel évitent même le sucre, le blé et les huiles végétales.
C’est ainsi que nous aimons prodiguer des soins médicaux au quotidien.
This is Harada from Harada Dental Clinic in Chiba City.
I’m thinking of going to a hot spring this summer. A hot spring even though it’s hot? You may think so, but not only winter hot springs but also summer hot springs are quite good.
I went to Nuremberg, Germany.
The reason I decided to go here was because I was interested in what a certain YouTuber was saying about Nuremberg.
Here’s what he says:
Nazi Germany committed the terrible crime of genocide of the Jews. As a reaction to this, after the war, Japan became more tolerant of immigration.
Nuremberg was where the postwar process of World War II took place, and it was here that Nazi Germany held its party rally.
In other words, Nuremberg is a sacred place for neo-Nazis.
At the same time, it was said that this is a land that is too tolerant of immigrants, and that there are many blacks, Arabs, and Asians, and that the town is dirty and dangerous at night, causing disturbances.
When I was a child, I was told that America was a dangerous country and people would get shot, and I believed that for a while. Of course, there are a lot of people living in America, so at least it’s rare for a tourist to be suddenly shot at a tourist spot.
So I decided to go to Nuremberg, which is said to be an extremely filthy city where there are many neo-Nazis and immigrants cause a lot of trouble.
When I actually went there, I had some expectations, but Nuremberg was a peaceful and beautiful city.
I didn’t see anyone who looked like a neo-Nazi. They are skinheads, machos, and white supremacists.
Some people had tattoos on their muscular arms.
But it is also found outside of Nuremberg in other European countries and Central and South America.
Soccer player Messi also has a tattoo on his arm.
There were immigrants.
This can also be found in any major city in Germany.
Outside of Germany, they can be found in Italy, France, the UK, and other Scandinavian countries.
Nuremberg was not particularly popular.
Personally, I like that Germany has a lot of immigrants.
In addition to German food, which can never be described as delicious, you can eat food from many different countries.
You can enjoy Vietnamese, Indian, Persian, Lebanese, Turkish, and of course the major Italian, French, and Chinese dishes.
In Nuremberg, I had Ethiopian food for the first time in my life.
The Ethiopian restaurant had one rule.
That is, the use of knives, forks, and spoons is prohibited.
That means you have to eat it with your bare hands.
I washed my hands thoroughly and washed my oily hands again after eating.
Eating food with bare hands was something I learned from traveling to India when I was a student.
To honor Germany, I think that the deliciousness of German bread is among the best in the world.
That moist, juicy brown bread is one of the joys of traveling to Germany.
Let’s get back to the topic.
What I learned from this is that it’s best not to trust anything YouTubers or bloggers say.
Especially when it comes to overseas locations that are far away from Japan, it is impossible for anyone to actually go there to check things out, so you need to be even more careful.
I thought it was important to keep what I saw and heard on YouTube and blogs to myself and not tell anyone around me.
Also, the courtroom where the Nuremberg trials were held has been preserved and the building has been turned into a museum, but it was frustrating to see so many depictions of Japan.
I have heard that the Tokyo Trials were terrible, but I realized that in the end, history is written by the victors.
There is also a railway museum in Nuremberg that details the history of German railways.
It was an exciting place for me, who loves trains.
A dentist from Chiba communicated with a Japanese flight attendant when he went to Europe for a dental study group.
This year, when I flew on an international flight with a Japanese airline, I tried to charge my smartphone with the USB socket on the seat, but after more than three hours, it didn’t charge at all, or rather, it didn’t respond at all.
So I asked the flight attendant, and he said that sometimes the USB socket doesn’t charge because of insufficient power, but it should be possible to charge it with a normal two-pronged socket, so I tried it and it responded and charged immediately.
Even at overseas airports, it often doesn’t respond at all with USB sockets.
So the other day, when I was having a meeting about renovating my clinic, I was told that USB sockets are not as popular these days, and that it’s better not to install them, at least in newly built clinics.
When I looked it up online, I found that it’s almost impossible to think of a malfunction of the socket as the reason you can’t charge with a USB outlet, but since it doesn’t respond at all even when you plug it in, I thought that was definitely not the case.
However, after that, I was told that there are various USB sockets, and that the USB 2.0 Type A socket has a 0.5Amp output, which is too low for modern smartphones.
But what does it mean that there is no reaction even when you plug it into the socket?
Also, if USB itself keeps evolving like this, it will be difficult to change to a new one if it is fixed to the wall.
Therefore, it is a good choice not to attach USB sockets to buildings.
The three C’s are Colombia, Costa Rica, and Chile. To be more specific, it is an urban legend that there are many extremely beautiful women in these three countries.
Actually, I have been to these three countries.
I’m sorry to disappoint you, but from what I’ve seen from hundreds of people I see on the streets, there aren’t many particularly beautiful women in these three countries.
It’s true that there are people who look beautiful with lots of makeup.
However, I don’t know what it would be like without makeup.
At least when it comes to the three major beauties, I’m not talking about beautiful women with heavy makeup, but at least people who look beautiful with natural makeup.
In any country or region, there are people who are beautiful and there are people who are not.
I rather value beauty that comes from within. Inner beauty.
Even if you are beautiful in your teens and 20s, if you lead an unhealthy lifestyle or repeat bad behavior, it will show in your appearance.
Even if you can temporarily deceive someone, it won’t last long.
By the way, according to one guide, Chile is the safest country in South America.
Because the Andes are tall and long, there are no natural enemies, so even if you are bitten by a scorpion or snake, there is no poison, so it is safe.
Chile is one of the few countries in South America where you can drink tap water.
Camping at the foot of the Andes is fun.
The story of pressing the emergency button in the toilet of a dentist in Chiba
Hello
This is Harada from Harada Dental Clinic in Chiba City.
It’s March. It’s getting warmer little by little.
The staff is preparing for the end of the fiscal year and for the training of new staff who will join from April.
Have you ever been to a communist country?
Is China a communist country that is close and relatively easy to get to?
There are far fewer communist countries now, but before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, there were many communist countries in Europe.
I have been to the Soviet Union and East Germany during the communist era.
At that time, Germany was divided into East and West, and different currencies were used.
The capital of West Germany is Bonn, and the capital of East Germany is Berlin.
And Berlin itself was divided into East Berlin and West Berlin.
Germany is famous for its beer, but the beer I drank in East Berlin was, at best, simple, or in other words, it was like water.
And one thing I still remember clearly is the disco that was in front of a certain station.
As it is a communist country, there are no private companies or shops; everything is state-owned.
In other words, this disco is also state-owned.
I didn’t go inside, but I saw it from the outside and immediately felt it.
In a country where there is no freedom in anything, not to mention criticizing the government, this discotheque, with its refreshing appearance, was created to encourage young people to let off steam and say, “You guys can dance here.”
I realized that I really don’t like communism.
I was surprised when I boarded the train to West Berlin after a day of sightseeing in East Berlin.
A number of soldiers with machine guns were keeping watch in the attic of the East Berlin train station.
I was stunned because I saw a scene I had only seen in war movies. Of course you can’t point the camera at it.
Once the train leaves East Berlin, it runs through a buffer zone for a while.
This is a plain of empty dirt as far as the eye can see.
There are no trees or even grass growing.
There are watchtowers to watch over it.
In other words, I thought that anyone who tried to go from East Berlin to West Berlin was almost certain to be detected and sometimes shot.
When I arrived in West Berlin, freedom was as common as in other European cities.
It was full of energy.
At that time, there were many stories about how terrible bureaucracy was in communism.
One such incident occurred at a hotel in Poland.
A traveler accidentally pulled the emergency contact cord in the bathroom of the hotel he was staying in in Warsaw.
Since he doesn’t speak Polish, he expected the hotel staff to come right away, but they didn’t come until the next morning.
There were many stories like this that would be unthinkable in Japan or Western countries.
However, some of these vestiges remain even after these countries democratized.
When I went to a state-owned bank in the Czech Republic to exchange old banknotes for new banknotes, the first staff member who answered the call and the staff member who exchanged the banknotes were the exact opposite of hospitality, treating the customer as if they were the enemy. They glared at me and told me to leave as soon as I finished my business, reminding me of the evil customs officials when I entered the Soviet Union in the past.
