The head of the Latvian Patient Experience Association, Vita Steina, notes that hospitals should strengthen staff skills in health communication, including explaining information about medications in a simple and understandable language for patients.
In her opinion, hospitals should more widely use explanatory materials about medications and possible side effects developed by the State Agency of Medicines in everyday communication with patients. A unified digital platform would also be useful, where patients can access explanations about medications in a language understandable to the average person.
Steina also emphasizes the need for more comprehensive involvement of clinical pharmacists in the treatment process to reduce the risks of medication incompatibility, as well as ensuring a thorough verification of the patient's identity before administering medications.
In turn, when discharging a patient from the hospital, the method of paraphrasing should be used - asking the patient to repeat in their own words what they understood about the medications. Steina notes that this approach improves the practice of self-medication by patients and reduces the risk of readmission.
Alongside this, hospitals should provide patients with a written medication plan at the time of discharge and involve nurses in patient education. It is also important to analyze patient feedback and encourage their participation in reporting incidents related to medications.
Furthermore, specialists urge patients themselves to be more actively involved in enhancing their safety: keeping a record of all medications taken, asking about the reason for each medication's prescription and its dosage, clarifying possible side effects, and determining which medications to continue taking at home and how to continue treatment upon discharge.
Patients are advised to ask medical staff about the names of prescribed medications, why they are necessary, what the most common side effects are, how to act in case of worsening health, whether the new medication replaces any previously taken ones, and which medications should be continued at home after discharge.
It is one of two things. Either it is just the words of an official, or a person who realized that the health of Latvian society cannot do without the Russian language.
