The Japanese system has implemented a lot of principles from the German system in the past, and sometimes when I had a discussion with a doctor and he didn't know the English word he was looking for, his 'Japanese term' usually did get across because it was a derivative of the German language.
Experience Story - Clinical Exchange in Japan
Since the medical education initially was influenced by its German teachers, many German medical terms became part of the Japanese language. These include クランケ (kuranke) from German Kranke as a term for the sick ones, カルテ (karute) from German Karte (card) in the sense of a card to record the course of disease of a patient, ギプス (gipusu) from German Gips for an orthopedic cast, アレルギー (arerugī) from German Allergie for allergy, and ノイローゼ (noirōze) from German Neurose for neurosis. Even the word オルガスムス (orugasumusu) for orgasm originates from the German word Orgasmus.
Germanism (linguistics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I know a dental student and a nurse who both studied German before going into med schools. The dental student told me that some of his classmates had even gone to Germany for high school exchanges in anticipation of studying medicine.
When I went to the hospital in Japan the first the the nurse said to me was
Spreken zie deutsch? and seemed disappointed that I didn't. The only foreign language she knew was German.
And I think "strong knowledge of Japanese" is an understatement. You need to be fluent in Japanese if you expect people to trust you with their lives in your hands.