My first foreign hospital experience

As a newly hired teacher in South Korea, one requirement upon my first few weeks of arrival is to do a health check at a local hospital with my director in order to receive my immigration card and open my bank account.

The process was pretty simple, as the things that they were required to test for are the same things that people often need to be tested for in the states but the way they go about doing it is a little different.

Here are a few differences I noticed:

- I did the typical exam "get weight and height" measurement as always, which was the same except, of course, in kilograms and meters rather than pounds and inches.
- The TB (tuberculosis) test is not a skin test here.  They actually give a x-ray to test for this.  Which, in a way, is more convenient because you don't have to come back the next day but I do know of some people who tested positive on this method of testing who did not test positive with the skin test.  So how good is the validity compared to the skin test?  Its debatable.
- They do drug tests the same with a urine sample.  However, they are MUCH more laidback than how it is often done in the states.  They basically just gave me a plastic cup (no lid) and sent me to the public restroom.  They are more particular about "having enough" in the cup though that in the states.  The one thing they are mostly testing for here is marijuana (though still other drugs) because they don't want it anywhere in this country.  If you are found with any trace of it you get deported (either through the test or in public -- I've read that some testing is done at bars to be sure nobody ever has any).
- When they draw blood samples, it is done in the hallways.  No private room -- people just stand in line to get your blooddrawn.
- The doctors speak very good English (not always the nurses though).  I would have imagined this would be the case considering how strongly this country is about college graduates (and kids in general) knowing a second language.

Overall, it the hospitals feel more "laidback" and "clustered".  It is hard to explain, but during my couple hours of being there we had to bounce around to all different parts of the hospital just to get my testing done.  It didn't quite feel the same in procedure as it would doing the same thing in the states.  It also appears more crowded when you are there, though I think the reason is because they do such little and simple procedures (like blooddrawn, eye testing, hearing, weight, etc.) in the hallways or open-walled rooms.  Though, I suppose that by doing it this way everything gets done much faster.  Yes you still wait as you do in the states, but I think if I would've done ALL the stuff that I had to do in a US hospital that I did there it would've been longer than the 3 hours I did spend.  But, in the same regard, if I would've went to a hospital in the states where I had all of those tests done on the same floor/area it would've taken equally as long.  So I suppose you can argue that in the end they both equal out.