Zukunft der Personalentwicklung in der Pflege

Abstract

Demographic trends indicate that more people are getting older resulting in an increased demand for support with their health care issues. At the same time fewer young people are becoming nurses and job satisfaction of nurses is decreasing, leading to less intent to stay in the nursing profession. Health care is an important economic issue in Germany. In 2010 total spending on health care was €287 billion, or 11.6 % of the gross domestic product. There are 4.8 million people working in health care, meaning every ninth person is working in health care. The biggest profession in health care is nursing. For these reasons the shortage of nursing personnel is an important issue in health care politics. Professional staff development would help to alleviate this care crisis. This chapter focuses on two questions: From what mistakes of staff development in nursing can we learn? What is needed for future nursing? The following issues will be addressed. Scope for action and decision-making in nursing: It is a mistake not to take the research findings about job satisfaction in nursing seriously. The most important factor influencing job satisfaction in nursing is ownership of decision making. The less nurses are self-determined and self-controlled the more are they dissatisfied with their job. We can learn from magnet hospitals, which have implemented structural empowerment consequently for nurses. In Germany delegation of medical tasks to nurses is a current debate. For future nursing delegation of medical tasks should mean to transfer the whole activity to nursing, including diagnostic and therapeutic decision making. Leadership competence: It is a mistake not to educate leaders and junior managers in leadership at work. Future staff development has to say good-bye to the idea that leaders must be “born” and start to “make” leaders by developing leadership competencies. What we need in the future are nursing leaders who are qualified in both: management/leadership and nursing science. Knowledge about nursing science is important to enable leaders to support nursing research and the transfer of theory into practice. Leaders must be trained, junior leaders must be mentored, and the next generation of nursing leaders will be identified through a process of talent management. Interprofessional collaboration (IPC): It is a mistake to not take professional status struggles in health care seriously. In the future interprofessional collaboration should be the mission of every health care organization and should be implemented by structural empowerment of all health professionals. Interprofessional education and collaborative continuing education can be achieved via reflecting the interprofessional collaboration. The absence of true IPC leads to power status struggles and job dissatisfaction. It increases mistakes and costs. Training and continuing education: It is a mistake in German nursing not to offer the European standard of a Bachelor degree as a primary qualification. For future nursing we need a university-based education after 12 years of schooling, instead of hospital-based vocational training. For post-graduate development we need modern methods of continuing education with a focus on interprofessional education, computer-based simulation, online courses, distance learning, etc. Health and well-being of employees: It is a mistake not to focus on and invest into the health and well-being of employees. With the demographic change a huge group of employees (baby boomers) are getting old and prepare themselves for retirement. Since the next generations (generation X and generation Y) are smaller in numbers there will be fewer employees in health care. On the other hand the group of people in need of health care is growing. Health and well-being of employees in health care will be more important in the future for many reasons: 1. to make the health professions attractive for generation Y; 2. to reduce the intent to leave the job of health care professions; 3. to maintain or improve the health conditions of the health professionals. Multicultural health care professionals: It is a mistake to recruit staff from other countries without teaching them our language and our culture. Nursing shortage in Germany brings politicians and nursing management to large-scale recruiting of nurses from other countries. As we can learn from the chapter 11 about integration of nurses from overseas, learning the German language is not enough. Often Bachelor educated nurses from other countries are hired as assistant nurses, due to their language barriers. This leads to power struggles in the nursing teams, job dissatisfaction and negative team culture. In the future it will be important to learn from each other’s culture so as to enable teams with foreign nurses to work together effectively.