Key points
- 65.7% of employed Registered Nurses work in hospitals (end of 2024). But even within hospitals, the work differs greatly between acute care, convalescent, long-term care and psychiatric settings.
- The average length of stay is 15.5 days in general beds, 117.4 days in long-term care beds and 255.0 days in psychiatric beds (2024). How long you are involved with each patient differs.
- Clinics without inpatient beds basically have no night shifts. Home-visit nursing is basically covered by on-call at night, and special nursing homes (tokuyō) have few nursing staff, so nurses often make the medical judgments.
- The “who it may suit” notes in this article are the editors’ general take, not an assessment based on research. The surest way to find out whether a workplace suits you is a workplace visit or a paid trial shift.
Contents (3)
“I worked at a hospital” tells you very little about what someone’s days were actually like. An acute care ward, a long-term care ward and a psychiatric ward differ completely in how long you spend with each patient and in what the nights look like.
According to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) Report on Public Health Administration and Services (衛生行政報告例), of the 1,363,142 Registered Nurses (看護師) employed at the end of 2024, 895,944 (65.7%) work in hospitals. That is two in every three nurses. But the point of this article is that “the hospital” is not one kind of workplace.
Source: MHLW, 令和6年衛生行政報告例（就業医療関係者）の概況 (Report on Public Health Administration and Services 2024: employed health workers) (2025)
Three yardsticks for comparing workplaces
When we compare workplaces, the editors use these three yardsticks.
- How long you are involved with each patient: the average length of stay (the average number of days from admission to discharge) gives a rough idea.
- How nights are covered: night shifts, on-call (waiting by the phone and coming in when needed), or no night work at all.
- How many nursing staff there are: the minimum set by law and by the medical fee schedule (診療報酬) standards. This also decides whether nurses are the majority or a minority in the workplace.
| Bed type | Average length of stay | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| General beds | 15.5 days | Fast admissions and discharges; short involvement with each patient |
| Long-term care beds (療養病床) | 117.4 days | Caring for the same patients over months |
| Psychiatric beds | 255.0 days | Supporting recovery and the move back into the community over an even longer timeline |
Nine workplaces, side by side
1. Acute care hospitals (general wards)
These are the core of general beds, which make up 59.9% of hospital beds. Admissions and discharges are fast, with many procedures and sudden changes in patients’ condition. Under the medical fee schedule, 7:1 nurse staffing (7対1: at least one nurse per seven inpatients) means keeping at least one nursing staff member for every seven inpatients at all times, and it comes with other conditions such as at least 70% of nursing staff being RNs and an average length of stay of 16 days or less. From June 2026 there is also a new basic inpatient fee for acute care hospitals (急性期病院一般入院基本料, “acute care hospital A/B”), which rates a hospital’s function by its number of emergency transports and general-anesthesia operations.
Wards have night shifts, and as a rule each ward has at least two nurses on at night.
- People who want to see many cases in a short time and build skills in procedures and responding to sudden deterioration
- People who don’t mind working closely and often with many professions and departments
- People who can work shifts, including nights
2. Convalescent and chronic care wards (convalescent rehab, community-based integrated care, long-term care)
These wards help people go home after acute treatment, or support long-term care. Nurse staffing is thinner than in acute care: the convalescent rehabilitation ward (回復期リハビリテーション病棟) and the community-based integrated care ward (地域包括ケア病棟) use ratios such as 13:1, and long-term care wards use 20:1 for nursing staff plus 20:1 for nursing assistants (看護補助者). Working alongside nursing assistants and rehab professionals therefore makes up a larger part of the job. The average length of stay in long-term care beds is 117.4 days (2024).
- People who want to follow recovery and changes in daily life over weeks or months
- People who enjoy building patients’ “everyday life” together with rehab professionals, care workers and medical social workers
- People who would rather focus on whole-body care and end-of-life care in a calmer setting than work at acute care speed
3. Psychiatric hospitals
There are 1,057 psychiatric hospitals and 316,147 psychiatric beds, making up 21.5% of hospital beds (2024). The average length of stay is 255.0 days, an order of magnitude longer than general beds. Psychiatric emergency wards and long-stay wards work very differently, and tasks based on the Mental Health and Welfare Act (精神保健福祉法), such as admission for medical care and protection (医療保護入院) and restrictions on behavior like seclusion and physical restraint, are part of daily work.
- People more interested in supporting patients through relationships and conversation than through procedures
- People who like agreeing on care plans as a team with doctors, psychiatric social workers, occupational therapists (OT) and certified public psychologists
4. Clinics (診療所)
There are 105,207 general clinics, and 94.9% are clinics without inpatient beds (無床診療所) (October 2024). Clinics without beds basically have no night shifts. Clinics employ 194,665 RNs and 76,541 Licensed Practical Nurses (准看護師), and for LPNs they are the most common workplace (end of 2024). The work changes a lot by specialty (internal medicine, pediatrics, dermatology, orthopedics and so on), and some clinics let you deepen a specific skill, such as dialysis or endoscopy.
Clinics with inpatient beds (有床診療所) need nurse cover at night whenever there are inpatients.
- People who want no night shifts and mostly day work (to balance childcare or family caregiving, or to hold a second job)
- People interested in outpatient nursing and long relationships with local patients
- People who don’t mind a small workplace where you work closely with reception and medical office staff (医療事務)
5. Home-visit nursing stations
There are 18,042 home-visit nursing (訪問看護) stations (October 2024), 9.9% more than a year earlier. The staffing standard is “at least 2.5 full-time-equivalent nursing staff,” and the average station has 5.8 full-time-equivalent nursing staff, so these are small organizations. Nights and holidays are basically covered by on-call (phone support plus emergency visits when needed). The FY2024 fee revision added a higher-rated category for stations that take “steps to reduce the burden” on staff, such as securing an interval before work the day after a nurse has responded at night.
In Nurse Center (ナースセンター) data, the job-openings-to-applicants ratio for home-visit nursing stations is 4.54, the highest of any type of workplace (FY2024).
- People comfortable visiting alone and observing, judging and reporting on the spot
- People who want to be involved long-term with clients and their families, and give care that fits into daily life
- People who don’t mind driving and getting around, and who can fit the number of on-call days around their family situation
6. Long-term care health facilities (老健, rōken)
Long-term care insurance facilities whose purpose is to help residents return home and to support care at home. There are 4,214 of them (October 2024). A major difference from tokuyō is that they have doctors on a full-time-equivalent basis. The standard is at least one nursing or care staff member for every three residents, with roughly two-sevenths of those being nursing staff. The average care-need level of residents is 3.17, and rehab and discharge support make up a large part of the work.
- People who want to work between acute care and home, helping with rehab and rebuilding daily life
- People looking for a workplace with doctors on hand but fewer procedures than a hospital
7. Special nursing homes for older people (特養, tokuyō)
There are 8,621 of them (October 2024). Residents are, in principle, at care-need level 3 or higher, and the average care-need level is 3.92. They are not medical institutions but “places to live.” The minimum number of nursing staff is set by the number of residents: for example, 3 (full-time equivalent) in a facility with 51 to 130 residents. Only “the necessary number” of visiting physicians is required, so nursing staff carry much of the medical observation and judgment. Under the standards, nursing staff are not required to work night shifts, and on-call cover at night is said to be common (we found no public statistics on how common).
- People who want to support the daily lives of long-term residents, including being there at the end of life
- People who, as one of a small number of nurses, can work as equals with care workers and counselors
8. Health check-up centers
Among job seekers registered with Nurse Centers, this is the third most requested type of workplace, after clinics without inpatient beds and hospitals with 20 to 199 beds (FY2024). There are no night shifts. You draw blood from many people a day, so venipuncture skills are needed, and mobile check-ups, where a check-up bus visits workplaces, can involve early-morning meeting times and travel. We found no public statistics on nurses working specifically at health check-up centers.
- People who put day-only work and weekends off (depending on the center) first, and people coming back after a career break
- People who don’t mind repeating the same tasks accurately
9. Companies (occupational health)
Nursing staff working at companies and other workplaces number 5,045 public health nurses (保健師), 5,879 RNs and 1,066 LPNs (end of 2024). That is 0.4% of all RNs, and there are few openings. The law names “public health nurses” for health guidance after health checks and as those who can carry out the stress check; RNs need to complete designated training to carry out stress checks. As a rule, there are no night shifts.
- People interested in mental health measures and in helping employees balance treatment and work
- People who can structure their own work, even as the only nurse on site
Don’t let “who it suits” decide for you
The “who it may suit” notes above are the editors’ general take. They are not aptitudes confirmed by research. In reality, the number of on-call days can be completely different from one home-visit nursing station to the next, and some acute care wards have a calm atmosphere.
Once you have narrowed things down by type of workplace, the next step is to go and see each one. How many people work the night shift, the break room, how records are kept, whether there is someone more senior working the same way you want to. We have gathered what to look at in the checklist for workplace visits (見学) and paid trial shifts (お試し勤務).
Facility and bed numbers come from the MHLW Survey of Medical Institutions and the Survey of Institutions and Establishments for Long-term Care; numbers of employed staff come from the Report on Public Health Administration and Services; staffing standards come from the relevant ministerial ordinances and the FY2026 medical fee schedule notices. The job-openings-to-applicants ratio is the Japanese Nursing Association’s (JNA) analysis of Nurse Center registration data, not the ratio for all job openings in Japan.
Sources and references
- 令和6年衛生行政報告例（就業医療関係者）の概況 (Report on Public Health Administration and Services 2024: employed health workers) (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW), 2025)
- 令和6(2024)年医療施設（動態）調査・病院報告の概況 (Survey of Medical Institutions (dynamic) and Hospital Report 2024) (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW), 2025)
- 令和5(2023)年医療施設（静態・動態）調査・病院報告の概況 (Survey of Medical Institutions (static and dynamic) and Hospital Report 2023) (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW), 2024)
- 令和6年介護サービス施設・事業所調査の概況 (Survey of Institutions and Establishments for Long-term Care 2024) (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW), 2025)
- 基本診療料の施設基準等の一部を改正する件（令和8年厚生労働省告示第70号） (Partial amendment of the facility standards for basic medical fees, MHLW Notice No. 70 of 2026) (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW), 2026 (applies from June 1, 2026))
- 医療法施行規則 第19条 (Ordinance for Enforcement of the Medical Care Act, Article 19) (e-Gov Laws and Regulations search (Digital Agency), checked Sept 2026)
- 指定介護老人福祉施設の人員、設備及び運営に関する基準／介護老人保健施設の人員、施設及び設備並びに運営に関する基準／指定居宅サービス等の事業の人員、設備及び運営に関する基準 (Standards on staffing, facilities and operation for designated special nursing homes / long-term care health facilities / designated in-home services) (e-Gov Laws and Regulations search (Digital Agency), checked Sept 2026)
- 2024年度 ナースセンター登録データに基づく看護職の求職・求人・就職に関する分析 (Analysis of nurse job seeking, job openings and placements based on Nurse Center registration data, FY2024) (Japanese Nursing Association (JNA), 2025)
This article is based on materials we could confirm as of Sept 25, 2026. Rules and figures can change. Before you file anything or make a decision, check the latest guidance from your employer, the tax office, the pension office or your local municipality.
Written by
Cura editorial team
We are the editorial team of Cura (クーラ), a service for choosing a workplace through visits and trial shifts. We read public materials from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the Japanese Nursing Association and others, and write about what helps healthcare workers choose where to work. We cite a source for every number and say when each rule takes effect. When we don’t know something, we say so.
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