Bellevue Reporter
BELLEVUE, Wash. — Hideharu Tanaka believes the Bellevue Fire Department’s emergency medical services system to be one of the best in the world, and didn’t hesitate to travel more than nine hours by plane from Tokyo with eight of his Kokushikan University students to prove it.
“The reason we’re here is because Seattle/Bellevue is one of the best places for learning about the EMS system,” said Tanaka, who first visited the city last year. He came back to learn more about the best practices he wants to apply at his university, where he is a professor of the department of emergency medical system trauma, burn and prehospital care medicine disaster and EMS Rescue Institute. “Still, we have a lot of things we should learn from the U.S., especially the educational process.”
Tanaka arrived in Bellevue over the weekend with eight master students who are studying to also one day become EMS educators in Japan. They spent Saturday touring the Bellevue Police Department and Fire Station 2 in Eastgate, learning about various medical and fire suppression apparatuses used by the department. Students paired off Sunday to do ride-alongs with four medic units.
Full story: Japanese students study Bellevue’s EMS system