What Shapes a Doctor? Professor Hiroshi Nishigori on Culture and Professionalism

Professor Hiroshi Nishigori is Professor of Medical Education at Nagoya University’s Graduate School of Medicine and the current President of the Japan Society for Medical Education. He earned his Master’s in Medical Education from the University of Dundee, and later completed his PhD in Health Professions Education at Maastricht University.

Originally trained as an internist, he became deeply interested in how people learn and grow during his early years of medical practice - not only as clinicians, but as educators and human beings.

Over the years, Hiroshi's work has explored the intersection of culture and work ethic, asking a fundamental question at the heart of medicine: Why do doctors work for patients? The very question that also framed his PhD thesis. Rather than treating professionalism as a fixed set of individual traits, his research approaches medicine as a culturally embedded form of work, shaped by shared values, social expectations, and moral commitments.

Drawing on uniquely Japanese concepts such as Bushido - a moral discipline and sense of integrity shared with traditional arts like judo and kendo - and Yarigai, the sense of fulfilment found in meaningful service to others, Hiroshi’s work goes beyond a mere description of Japanese culture. It seeks to place these perspectives into dialogue with the global medical education community, not as culturally exotic examples, but as conceptual resources that can challenge, enrich, and expand dominant Western frameworks.

In this episode, Hiroshi talks with Alina Jenkins about how culture shapes doctors’ relationships with work—from duty and moral responsibility to finding meaning through service—and why continuing to ask why doctors work for patients remains essential to medical education worldwide. Together, they explore how culturally grounded perspectives can open new conversations about well-being, ethics, and the moral purpose of medicine across different societies.