Essen’s university clinic director Werner criticizes the low chances of advancement in nursing professions. In addition to the high workload, this is another reason why the job is often unattractive for young people. And he makes suggestions for improvement.
Essen (dpa / lnw) – In addition to the high workload, the director of the University Hospital Essen sees a lack of opportunities for advancement and too few qualification offers as the causes of the nursing shortage in Germany. “The perspective for the nursing staff is of central importance for the future of this profession,” said Professor Jochen A. Werner of the German Press Agency. “We didn’t pay enough attention to lifelong planning. Nurses clearly leave their profession too early to do another job,” said the doctor. “Personnel development and opportunities for advancement are therefore of the utmost importance.”
The problem mainly affects women, who work far more often in care than men. The 63-year-old doctor emphasized that doctors at hospitals had comparatively much better career opportunities. “It’s different there: assistant doctor, ward doctor, senior doctor, senior doctor, senior doctor, head doctor. It’s regulated, but it doesn’t exist in nursing.”
Werner made the problem clear with an example: “How is it at the moment? There is an 18-year-old person, man or woman, who is supposed to work until 65 or 70. When they reach the age of 30, many nurses are at the end of their professional life development,” he criticized. Opportunities for advancement are “very, very limited”.
In order to make the nursing profession more attractive, Werner pleads for “stronger personnel development, adapted to different phases of life and health aspects”. For example, nurses could be further qualified and employed as teachers for teaching nurses if they could no longer work in nursing themselves, physically or mentally.
According to a study presented in March 2022 by NRW Health Minister Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU), the average length of stay for health and nursing staff in NRW is around 18 years, and for geriatric care 13 years. It is “alarming” for Laumann that only about 50 percent of the nursing staff surveyed tended to be satisfied or very satisfied in their job.
About half said that employers’ appreciation of their work had deteriorated over the years. Two thirds perceived a deterioration in working conditions. Laumann’s conclusion: “Good working conditions are not only a sign of appreciation for the work done, but also a motivation for everyone involved to continue working in the field of activity.”
Far removed from reality is the belief that women, for example, will return to the nursing profession after the birth of their children, said Werner: “There is the idea that 300,000 to 600,000 former nurses will flow back into the hospitals from their other lives, that they will come back to the shift operation of a hospital.” But that will certainly not happen, says the head of the clinic. “What we need is greater permeability between different job descriptions, which are also planned for later re-entry.” It is very important that “we keep the strength that we have in the job. And we have to make it possible for them to continue their education.”
In Essen, a course in “Care and Digitization” has been developed with the FOM University, a state-recognized private university for health science courses for employees and trainees. “We have to offer further specializations, otherwise the nursing staff will leave the profession.” More attention needs to be paid to the mental health of caregivers. “Anyone who has to deal with suffering must also be able to process it. And you can’t do that between two shifts,” says Werner.
At the end of 2020, according to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), almost 486,100 people were employed in nursing services in hospitals in Germany. A little less than a quarter of them (113,326) worked in NRW. According to the statisticians, the need for workers in care has been increasing for years, but the market has been swept empty.