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Better Offer to ME Patients
The support to people
with ME shall be improved. The Health and Care Services minister, Sylvia
Brustad, is setting in motion further initiatives to ensure better
information about the illness and increased professional competency.
"This is an illness which is difficult to diagnose and
treat, and it is an illness to which health services have, up til now,
given too little attention. This the government will change, and will
follow this up in the budget process" said Health and Care Services
minister Sylvia Brustad.
The
initiatives are the starting point in an official recommendation from the Social
and Health Directorate.
"A
national competency network will be set up. Both patients and healthcare staff’s
knowledge about the illness will be increased. We will make certain that the
patients’ experiences will be taken seriously", says Brustad.
More about
the initiatives -
A
competency network will be set up to safeguard the national competency knowledge
base based on existing professional expertise. This is in line with the
Social and Health directorate’s recommendation, and the directorate will have
the responsibility to coordinate the network on a national level. The tasks for
the competency network will, amongst other things, be research together with
following international professional development, guidance and education of
healthcare personnel both in specialist health services and prime healthcare
services and information to patients/carers.
There
shall be created an information initiative in order to strengthen both patients'
and healthcare personnel’s knowledge of the illness, and of management and
nursing. It is of great importance that it intends to increase the knowledge
about the illness for
those that work with these patients on a daily basis.
The regional health authorities have already imposed the use
diagnostic criteria to identify patients with ME and ensure management is
offered to the group. Patients with ME will get help both from specialist
healthcare services as well as the communal care services. It is
especially important that this initiative will be provided for the most
seriously affected, and that it is set up in relation to the individual patient’s needs. It
will be
set up to support the development model for nursing and care,
as patients have special needs. Other initiatives concern Education and
Skills of health employers, and a mobile team which can go out to seriously ill
patients at their homes.
(Report
from Social and Health Directorate with the official recommendations is
available on the Directorate’s own web site.)
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