In order to reduce the workload of family doctors in the autumn, the Ministry of Health and the Latvian Medical Association are calling on educational institutions not to require a certificate of illness for a child, except in cases where the doctor has given special recommendations, the Ministry of Health reported.
The Ministry of Health and the Latvian Medical Association are calling on educational institutions to clarify their internal rules and stipulate that a doctor’s note is only required in the case of special recommendations, such as exemption from sports or other educational activities, which must be reported to the educational institution. Current practice shows that the workload of family doctors increases in the fall due to the need to issue such notes for educational institutions, the Ministry of Health noted.
President of the Latvian Medical Association Ilse Eissilniece emphasized that most acute respiratory diseases, as well as acute gastrointestinal problems, go away on their own, which means that the immune system, especially in children, helps to recover even without medication. She explained that in such cases, medical intervention is not required, and the child only visits the doctor to get a certificate for kindergarten or school, although it is better for him to stay at home in a calm environment to recover.
She noted that it is the doctor who must decide whether a certificate is required when a child returns to school. If there are no special instructions for the school or kindergarten, the child can return to the educational institution without a certificate, Ilze Aizsilniece added.
This is important because excessive or unjustified requests for certificates to justify a child’s absence create an additional burden on doctors and the healthcare system, as well as on parents, Aizsilniece emphasized.
At the same time, VM and the Center for Disease Prevention and Control, in collaboration with doctors, developed recommendations and an algorithm of actions for both parents and educational institutions in the event of cold symptoms in children. Most often, an acute cold is accompanied by a runny nose, cough, sore throat and fever, which last for several days, so the scheme developed by doctors helps to understand in which cases a visit to the doctor is required, and in which cases rest at home is enough until the cold symptoms disappear. In the fall, these recommendations were transferred to the Ministry of Education and Science to create a unified approach in the presence of signs of an acute respiratory infection in a child.
Source: www.gorod.lv
