Nursing Teachers most Wanted!

The mandatory generalist nursing education that will be introduced on 1 January 2020 will increase the organisational workload for training colleges and nursing schools.

Announced in July 2017, the Act on Reforming the Nursing Professions will lay the foundation for the viable and high-quality training of nurses working at hospitals, paediatric clinics and in care homes.

The urgent need for reforms reflects the demographic changes affecting our society. The care requirements and supply structures are changing continuously, which alters the demands for nursing staff as well. At present, registered nurses and paediatric nurses are trained separately from geriatric nurses, despite the significant overlaps in professional profiles. The new Nursing Professions Act is designed not only to make careers in care more attractive, but primarily to increase the quality of the care itself.

In a nutshell: The new generalist nursing qualifications will teach interdisciplinary skills in caring for patients of all age groups and in all settings.

Qualification: Registered Nurse

As a result, the courses for training geriatric, general and paediatric nurses will be merged to create a generalist curriculum with a standardised qualification as a ‘registered nurse’.

Benefit for trainees: The 3-year nursing course will become free, tuition fees will be abolished and a training allowance will be paid.

A general curriculum will be taught in the first two years. Budding registered nurses will then select a specialist subject (for instance in-patient long-term care) for the third year after being familiarised with all areas of nursing. Students selecting this option would then be awarded a professional qualification as ‘geriatric nursing specialists’.

Requirements and implications for the nursing schools

Besides the standard requirements that nursing schools must provide suitable, adequate and qualified teachers and premises,

• they will also be placed in overall charge of coordinating classroom teaching and practical training,
• ensuring that the practical training is carried out in line with the training schedule, and
• coordinating the relationship between theory and practice.

The implications for the nursing colleges are particularly serious, as the organisation of training will become more laborious and cooperation with authorities and general networking will be more important. The greater focus on practical instruction and support will require staff changes, retraining measures and qualification of practical instructors and teachers. Colleges will also be required to prepare their own curricula. All of these tasks must be completed by the beginning of 2020.

Sweeping change management

Quite apart from these aspects, it will take a Herculean effort to satisfy the required staffing quotas: Budgets will have to be recalculated, and the recruitment and onboarding of new employees will no doubt prove to be tricky as well.

The greatest challenge facing the authorities and the educational institutes is organising the mandatory practical training for trainees. Friedhelm Fiedler, vice president of the employers’ association for the nursing professions AGVP, is critical of this particular aspect of the training and examination regulations: “One example is that the authorities are responsible for organising the practical side of courses. This means they will need to sign suitable cooperation agreements. But how is that meant to work when it is perfectly clear that there are currently not even remotely enough places in Germany to provide mandatory training to all of the trainee paediatric nurses?”

It is already evident that the introduction of the Nursing Professions Act on 01/01/2020 will bring with it radical changes for all schools, and it is equally foreseeable that some of them will close down their courses entirely due to the considerable organisational workload.