University degree for nursing professionals

Science Council recommends an academization of health and care professions

07/17/2012

Due to the advancement of medicine and demographic change, a regular technical college degree in the care landscape is often no longer sufficient, in the view of the Wissenschaftsrat apprentices in nursing professions should be able to specialize in the future by means of a university degree. At any rate, this is proposed by the Wissenschaftsrat, as an advisory body to the Federal Government. The medical profession reacts to the ideas rather restrained.

After the nursing high school graduation now also the nursing bachelor should follow, if it goes after the conceptions of the science advice. Instead of training only at the nursing school, nurses should also be given the opportunity to complete a university degree. The German Medical Association responded to the suggestions. She advocates retention of the existing and a bundling of competences.

According to the ideas of the Science Council, health professions should also be academic in the future. Although not physiotherapists and occupational therapists or nurses or nurses should have a university degree in the future, but some should be given the opportunity to acquire more expertise due to the increasing demands in the field of medicine.

Up to 20 percent of graduates with academic titles
Thus, the Science Council assumes that up to 20 percent of a year in Therapy, Midwifery and Nursing can complete a bachelor's degree at a university. However, between 2700 and 5500 new study places would have to be created for nursing professions alone, as Professor Hans-Jochen Heinze, neurologist and chair of the medical committee in the Wissenschaftsrat, declared on Monday in Berlin.

At least 1,100 new study places would have to be sufficient for the therapeutic professions and 50 places would be sufficient for the midwives for the time being. About the cost of the expert could give no precise information. „In any case, it will certainly be expensive“, so Heinze.

Countries responsible for study places
The individual federal states are responsible for the creation of new study places. The Conference of Ministers of Education was open to the proposals of the Science Council. On request, a spokesman stressed that the proposals of the Council „be taken very seriously“. The cultural ministers of the federal states want to discuss this issue later this year.

Medical progress and an aging society make a university education branch of the conventional health professions necessary, so the Wissenschaftsrat. Due to the demographic development, people are getting older and older, and so are the content-related tasks in the care sector. "People are getting older and are therefore increasingly frequently chronically ill," said Heinze. The nurses and nurses are thus facing increasingly complex requirements. It was necessary that also the „own work can be checked evidence-based“. According to the reasoning of the Council, such tasks require an academic education.

„Do not qualify from the nursing bed“
But nurses should not „be qualified from the nursing bed away“, stressed Heinze. In multi-professional teams, however, senior practitioners could work to relieve doctors.

The proposals were received very restrained by the German Medical Association (BÄK). Deputy Medical Councilor Dr. Max Kaplan warned against further fragmentation of the supply landscape. This could happen through a further level of care by non-medical, academic nursing professions. Instead, should „multi-professional cooperations“ be closed on the basis of the existing, in order to bundle already existing competences and promote. (Sb)

Also read:
Healthcare industry in growth
Massive increase in temporary work in nursing
Nursing homes: One in five residents is tied up

Picture: JMG