Patient education in Estonia

Abstract

Following the developments in Health Promotion in Estonian Health Care during the past 5–6 years, it is possible to observe remarkable progress in this field. The fundamental achievement is the shifting of a patient into the attention centre of the health care system. The patient-oriented approach means: to increase the involvement of the patient and his/her family in valuing and maintaining their health and modelling healthy behaviour; coping with chronic disease in relation to everyday activities; patient satisfaction; psycho-social support and counselling. The patient education is a multiprofessional teamwork and interdisciplinary co-operation that should be carried out in two levels mainly: primary health care and hospital levels. The key-persons in patient education are family doctors, nurses and trained hospital staff. It is essential for the development of health promotion in hospitals to incorporate the idea of health promotion as an integrated part of everyday work in addition to the traditional curative function.

Introduction

The Jakarta Declaration (1997) defined the importance of health as a basic human right. Health promotion has to be recognised as an essential element of health development, as a process of enabling people to increase control over their life in improving its quality.

In recent years, the health indicators in Estonia have shown improvement of public health. This progress can be largely contributed to health promotion activities. Health has become a popular subject in everyday discussions. International co-operation has grown more active and international health promotion movements have gained ground in Estonia. The Ministry of Social Affairs is working out the health policies, health strategies, laws and regulations and establishing priorities. Public knowledge and understanding of the main factors influencing health is in constant development.

“The diagnostic methods and the treatments are improving over the past fifty years. We live longer, due to effective preventive programs. However, also the shadow-side of the modern health care is getting more attention. We live longer, but what about the quality of life of people with a chronic or life threatening illness? Supportive care is an important and growing area in the health…” [1].

WHO acknowledges patient education as a multiprofessional team work. We have taken into account also the Recommendations of the Ljubljana Charter on Reforming Health Care on training in teamwork with multiprofessional and interdisciplinary co-operation, a problem-solving approach and active patient involvement in managing their chronic disease. The key persons in patient education are family doctors, nurses and trained hospital staff. The objectives of the program are: to increase patient participation in managing their disease; to decrease cardiovascular disease; to improve quality of life; to decrease hospital costs.

We would like to introduce some projects of the Estonian Centre for Health Education and Promotion that are managed or co-ordinated by the author of the article which includes the patient education program and activities.