Tiny cranes & mini-sushi: Inside intense Japanese ‘surgeon tryouts’ testing student skills (VIDEO)

The hiring process for medical students in Japan just got even more competitive with the addition of new ‘surgeon tryout’ tasks ranging from the strange to the nearly impossible.

Kurashiki Central Hospital in Western Japan has developed a series of tasks to test potential surgeons and find the most persevering candidates who can stay cool under intense pressure.

The test centers around three specific tasks: fold three tiny origami cranes, reassemble a tiny insect from small and fragile pieces, and create miniature pieces of sushi from single grains of rice. 

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All potential recruits were given just minutes to complete each mission, with each task more stressful than the previous.

“In daily clinical practice, physicians constantly confront difficult challenges. We would like to evaluate the capability of medical students to stay calm and make correct judgments even under these circumstances,” Dr Toshio Fukuoka, the hospital’s HR director, said in a statement.

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“We planned this tryout to reveal the potential and uniqueness of the students which ordinary written exams and interviews could not show,” he added.

While footage of the ‘tryouts’ may resemble a Japanese version of The Hunger Games, the recruits who succeeded in passing this radical recruitment process now have a place at Kurashiki hospital.