The son of a dentist, Dr. Toshihiko Nakajima had an early interest in medicine that culminated in his studies at the National Akita University in Japan, graduating with his MD in 2003. He gravitated early on in his career towards urology, drawn by its challenges in a country where a urologist must cover both internal medicine and surgical medicine. At the time, he was interested in the clinical breadth of urological care and the opportunity to accompany his patients’ treatment from the first consultation all the way through surgeries, chemotherapy and all related medical care.
Strongly affected by the death of a patient he was treating for terminal cancer, Dr. Toshi decided to focus on palliative care, assisting patients in their final weeks of life. Steeped in such a broad range of clinical situations—from diagnosis and examination through to surgery and chemotherapy as well as palliative care—he realised that he needed to further his core abilities as a GP so as to more effectively treat patients with a range of symptoms, from pain and breathing disturbances through to psychological problems.
To further his training, Dr. Toshi moved to Singapore in 2013 where he studied general practice and tropical medicine for a year, going on to work at the IHH Group hospital. He then continued to hone his skills in general practice at International SOS in Beijing before transferring to Hanoi and then moving on to our clinic in Saigon.
Dr. Toshi has now spent far longer outside of his native country than he initially anticipated, greatly enjoying practicing as a GP at Raffles Medical HCMC—especially given the group’s culture of coordinating medical expertise between doctors as a team. He is proud to support Japanese patients living overseas as well as to provide urological and pain management treatments for the broader community of patients. He envisages returning to Japan to continue in palliative care later in his career, given the increasing need for such specialists in his home country with its ageing population.
