The nursing staff’s real problems are not adequately reflected in the framework conditions. "The crucial question is: Apart from paying more, what can be done to really reduce pressure on nursing staff? We need to think about more flexible working hours and holiday arrangements. In other EU countries, holiday entitlement is higher than here in Germany."

In addition, there need to be clearer regulations about involving more semi-skilled workers without overstretching health insurance budgets, he said. "It can make sense for qualified nurses if some of their activities, such as personal hygiene or helping patients with their meals, are taken over by staff with different qualifications. We already do this to some extent in our Johanniter hospitals." In the neighbouring country of Switzerland, nurses don’t have to make beds, she said. "It helps a lot if a qualified nurse can concentrate on their actual work," Pocha believes.

Johanniter clinics are making various attempts to recruit and retain trainees.

The next round of training for nurses at the Johanniter hospital's own nursing school starts on 1 October.

The hospital is trying to accommodate its employees by offering flexible working hours. At the same time, Johanniter, like other hospitals in Bonn, is putting out feelers abroad and offering courses for skilled staff from non-EU countries whose training is not recognised in Germany.

Hans Bernd Köster, deputy head of the hospital's own nursing school, also speaks of increasing difficulties to find enough trainees. One reason is that the proportion of high school graduates is steadily increasing, and often university seems to be the "logical consequence". "According to the Federal Government, just under a quarter of young people can currently imagine taking up a social profession. There seems to be a new trend here."

The reason for the nursing shortage is not that there is too little training, "but because people don’t stay in the job long enough." Employers are called upon to introduce more family-friendly working hours, he said. "Another point is that the public image of nursing as a profession is dominated by terms such as stress, lack of prestige and poor pay. The last of these has not been true for a long time."

The hospital group, he said, is active in promoting trainees, including those with learning difficulties and language problems. There are bonuses for those who stay with the hospital after successfully completing their training. The legislator has introduced generalist training so that students can be employed in all areas such as hospitals, children's hospitals and elderly care homes. Köster assumes that the effect of this change will only be foreseeable in a few years. "Basically, I advise nurses to become politically active themselves."

Bonn's hospitals and the University Hospital (UKB) have been trying to recruit new staff for many years with information events, new training formats, and also abroad. UKB nursing director Alexander Pröbstl also believes that political self-determination in the form of the controversial nursing chamber is the right way forward; he sits on the founding commission. "Nursing must be allowed self-determination within the nursing chamber and in professional regulations to also expand activities, make them more independent and also be allowed to gain improved fields of activity and new ones for itself in terms of content," Pröbstl thinks.

NRW Health Minister Karl-Josef Laumann wants to introduce such a body. On the other hand, a number of nurses are against a nursing chamber and have organised themselves in various groups. The trade union Verdi is also against the chamber. They argue, among other things, that it is the state's task to guarantee the provision of nursing care. Collective bargaining should still be conducted by the trade unions.

Pröbstl sees the federal government as having a duty to further improve working conditions in nursing in order to make it more attractive, "since this has a decisive influence on the practical training field of nursing and the later field of activity". In his opinion, establishing academic basic training for nursing is sensible. Arno Appelhoff, secretary of the Verdi trade union, says that nursing homes are now offering "recruitment bonuses" and are poaching staff. The situation is complicated. On the one hand, employers are vying for the rare skilled workers. On the other hand, the workers are demanding that more people be employed in the wards. Verdi has planned new warning strikes for 12 and 13 April.

Original article: Philipp Königs

Translation: Jean Lennox