TBWA\Hakuhodo and Kurashiki Central Hospital’s ‘Surgeon Tryouts’ disrupts the traditional practice of recruiting the most skilled surgeons in Japan

Kurashiki Central Hospital, one of the largest hospitals in the western Japan, has teamed up with TBWA\Hakuhodo Japan to create a disruptive recruitment process that helps to identify the most skilled surgeons in the land – using sushi, origami cranes and insects.

Top surgeons require dexterity, keen eyesight, nerves of steel, as well as the ability to persevere through tremendous stress and pressure. However, conventional medical schools in Japan focus heavily on knowledge from books, and focus too little on essential hands-on surgical practice. This makes it difficult to differentiate between book-smart medical students and those with potential to become world-class surgeons.

Kurashiki Central Hospital decided to do something about this – working with TBWA\Hakuhodo to launch ‘Surgeon Tryouts’.

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New recruits are required to pass three near-impossible missions, in which they needed to demonstrate their potential surgical skills through unique metaphorical displays of talent:

Mission One: Fold three tiny origami cranes (5mm tall) out of mini pieces of paper. Mission Two: Reassemble a model of a tiny insect with many complex and fragile body parts. Mission Three: Create miniature pieces of sushi from single grains of rice.

All missions were carried out against the clock, requiring applicants to also show their ability to function under pressure.

“In daily clinical practice, physicians constantly confront difficult challenges,” said Dr. Toshio Fukuoka, Director of the Human Resource Development Center at Kurashiki Central Hospital. “We would like to evaluate the capability of medical students to stay calm and make correct judgments even under these circumstances. We planned this tryout to reveal the potential and uniqueness of the students, which ordinary written exams and interviews could not show.”

‘Surgeon Tryouts’ has truly disrupted the traditional practice of how surgeons are hired in Japan. The newest recruits at Kurashiki Central Hospital represent the vanguard of a radically new approach to surgeon recruitment in Japan.

Credits –

Programmer: Koki Ibukuro