Kela is a short name of Kansaneläkelaitos, which mean the Social Insurance Institution of Finland. It provides versatile benefits and services to residents of Finland. Kela has a key role in implementing the Finnish social security system.
Personally, I have received Kela benefits at several stages of my life. When I was studying my first degree, I got financial aid as well as housing allowance from Kela. Now, when I’m studying in Master´s degree, I get access to FSHS= Finnish Student Health Services through Kela. When I had children and I was temporarily out of working life, Kela paid me maternal and parental allowances. I also received a maternity package before the birth of each of my children. Nowadays Kela continues to pay us child allowance for each child until they have reached the age of 17. Kela also helps my family by providing partial reimbursement for the cost of medication prescribed for an illness and medical or dental care expenses.
I have had a European health care card for as long as I can remember. It’s always with me when I travel, but I’ve been lucky enough to never have to use it. It is super nice that with that card I have access to healthcare services in EU, but card does not cover private healthcare or non-urgent treatments neither repatriation costs, so a private travel insurance is necessary addition.
OmaKanta (MyKanta) is an online service where citizens can view the data entered by public and private healthcare services concerning appointments and medication. The service is available nationwide. You can log in to MyKanta on Kanta.fi page using banking credentials, a mobile certificate or an ID card with a chip that enables the use of online services.
Usually I use OmaKanta to check my own or my children´s health information. From OmaKanta I can find information concerning vaccinations or health records. Also treatment´s results such as blood test or X-ray results can be easily found. It is convenient that I can see recipes written for me and request a prescription renewal easily. During the covid-19 pandemic, I used COVID-19 certificate found at the OmaKanta to enter restaurants and to travel.
I have used Kanta service extensively also while working in primary health care.
According to Keva’s pension calculator, my lowest retirement age is 66 years 9 months. So I have more than 20 work year left. In addition it seems that it is not profitable to retire then, but with a few additional years of work, the amount of the pension would increase comfortable. It’s great that a pension offers financial security in old age, but at the same time it’s great that retirement age is still years away. Right now I feel that I am at my best working age, I want to grow and develop professionally, but also to be developing my own field and organization.
The retirement age of Finns has increased over the decades, but so has life expectancy. For some reason, people complaining about this topic annoys me. I think Finns’ right to receive a pension is like a luxury. It’s absolutely amazing that society offers that kind of advantage.It has been interesting to follow the discussion about pensions at the EU level and also to compare the pension systems in different countries.
DIGITAL SHOPPING
In my family we use a lot of different digital shopping services. I personally buy clothes and cosmetics by online. For example Zalando, About You, Kiko cosmetics and Oriflame are sites which I use a lot. In addition to these, I have bough hotel and flight reservations digitally in many times. Hotels.com, Booking.com, Trivago and Momondo are the services I mainly use.
In addition, I myself have an online cosmetics store where I sell Oriflame cosmetics products. You are welcome to visit my website if you want: https://fi.oriflame.com/?store=kirsisoininen.
Also my husband buys a lot of hobby related accessories online from all over the world. Various sports shops (like bikester) and Ebay and Amazon are in heavy use. We have also ordered our mountain bikes directly from the manufacturer. Even though we use online shopping services extensively, we haven’t face problems much. It is certainly athe result of careful familiarization with online stores. We always compare products and online stores, read customer experiences and research reliability.
The reason why we use digital shopping is the ease of its service. It’s wonderful to shop from your own couch without having to go around shopping malls. The selection is usually wide and price comparison are easy. Of course, the materials, sizes and shades of the products do not always meet my expectations, which case have to send the products back. It is always necessary to check the product return conditions before ordering. To be honest I don’t like sending them back at all, even though it’s often free and made it easy. However, ethics and ecology, the values of sustainable development are important to me and restrain my online purchases. Even though I use digital shops a lot I think about the carbon footprint of the products I buy and I boycott cheap online stores that violate the rights of their employees or use child labor. Sometimes I buy products from a local store also because I want to support entrepreneurs.
SERVICE FROM MY OWN, HEALTH CARE FIELD:
Terveyportti is a website that supports the work of healthcare professionals by providing the necessary medical information in one place. Terveysportti is constantly updated and contains several useful databases, including the doctor’s and nursing databases and the Duodecim drug database. In Terveysportti, you can also find current care guidelines and many useful links to scientific publications and medical catalogs.
I use this health portal as a tool for assessing the need for treatment. When the patient tells me about his symptoms, it is easy for me to interview the patient in the way suggested by the portal and give the client treatment instructions. It makes me more professional and helps me to remember every important parts of patient´s interview. Here I can also find all the necessary information that I need when guiding the patient on medical treatment and using drugs.
DIGITALIZATION AND DIGITAL GAP
According to several studies, there appears health inequality in Finland. People in the most vulnerable position have the greatest morbidity and this same group suffers also by lack of access health services. Digitization can make it easier to access services, but at the same time it will set a risk to the part of the population that do not have sufficient know-how of digital services. Groups like elderly people or disabled people also foreign language persons, are risk of being excluded from services. Another vulnerable group are those who live areas out of reach of services, e.g. due to poor internet connections.
Wider use of digital services requires a lot of resources, development, training, financing and actions in many different areas of society, but it will be happen for sure.
BLOG´S I HAVE COMMENTED ON
DIGITAL COMPETENCE TEST AND SELF REFLECTION
Digital competence test and also whole this digital environment course were been a very good tool for evaluating my own digital skills. I feel that my skills are overall all at a good level, but there are also areas that I need to develop.
My strengths are skills concerning collaboration and active participation. In high level is also my ability to care for both physical and mental health in an everyday life surrounded by technology and media. I think all this is the result of active participation in various digital platforms both at work and in my leisure time. My weakest skills were my ability to modify or create digital solutions and adjust applications and devices to my own preferences.
In this course, I especially enjoy reading other students’ blogs. It was interesting to compare people’s experiences of the same subject areas. Of particular interest were blogs whose authors were from a different field than me or whose authors came from other than Finland. The biggest learning experience comes from other people and shared thoughts together, thank you for that!