Patient education in Estonia

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.