A rejoinder to the review by Elywn and colleages.
A rejoinder to the review by Elywn and colleages.
A response to the rejoinders to Elwyn and colleages.
A rejoinder to the review by Elywn and colleages.
A rejoinder to the review by Elywn and colleages.
A rejoinder to the review by Elywn and colleages.
Background: Language discrepancies may create barriers to healthcare, compromise the quality of care and worsen health outcomes. This study explored what European countries currently do to ensure that foreign patients receive sufficient information about their medications if they do not understand the country's national language.
Methods: A questionnaire was distributed to the delegates of two Council of Europe committees. The recipients were asked to provide insights on how their country facilitates access to the necessary product information when patients do not understand the national language.
Results: Seventeen out of 39 delegates completed the questionnaire. The majority of the respondents indicated that all healthcare professionals experience difficulties in providing guidance and advice to foreign patients. The results also showed that different methods are used nationally to present the necessary information to foreigners. Finally, the observations from this survey suggested that electronic leaflets in the patient's primary language could be a valuable option to improve access to medication-related information.
Conclusions: Healthcare professionals seem to encounter challenges in providing foreign patients with information associated with medication use. Electronic leaflets can be one of the tools for improving communication between these patients and healthcare professionals to ensure that medicines are used safely and effectively.
Background: Clinicians and their employers, concerned with privacy and liability, are often hesitant to support the recording of clinical encounters. However, many people wish to record encounters with healthcare professionals. It is therefore important to understand how existing law applies to situations where an individual requests to record a clinical encounter.
Methods: We searched for and reviewed relevant legal documents that could apply to recording clinical encounters. We limited the scope by purposefully examining relevant law in nine countries: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States. We analyzed legal texts for consents needed to record a conversation, whether laws applied to remote or face-to-face conversations and penalties for violations.
Findings: Most jurisdictions have case law or statutes, derived from a constitutional right to privacy, or a wiretapping or eavesdropping statute, governing the recording of private conversations. However, little to no guidance exists on how to translate constitutional principles and case law into advice for people seeking to record their medical encounters.
Interpretation: The law has not kept pace with people's wish to record clinical interactions, which has been enabled by the arrival of mobile technology.