Addressing the nursing shortage intelligently and effectively with digitalization – digital health & care 2023
A joint event by the Referat für Arbeit und Wirtschaft of the City of Munich and the Munich Urban Colab
At the second event, "digital health & care," we want to actively exchange ideas with citizens and caregivers, with representatives of care facilities and services and their employees, with representatives of nursing education and applied nursing science, as well as with start-ups and companies from the "digital healthcare" sector, on how the shortage of skilled workers and care provision in nursing can be effectively addressed with the help of digital applications.
To this end, we have co-created a joint interactive program for our second conference with startups and the “Wir! Stiftung Pflegender Nachbarn” (We! Foundation for Caregivers).
The focus is, among other things, on the shortage of skilled workers and young talent, which is a pressing problem across all sectors in Germany. However, massive staffing and supply bottlenecks in the nursing sector have been accumulating for years, resulting in today's acute nursing shortage. The reasons for this are undoubtedly complex. On the one hand, they are rooted in demographic trends, as fewer and fewer young people are interacting with an increasing number of older people, who tend to require more care. On the other hand, the lack of attractiveness of nursing professions results in too few new entrants and too many career exits.
Given the complex nature of the problem, digitalization is not a panacea for nursing, but it can provide intelligent and effective solutions to support and ease the burden on staffing and care shortages at various levels. For example, digital applications in the areas of personnel, skills management, and shift planning help hospitals and nursing facilities coordinate work assignments more efficiently based on discipline and activity, thus optimizing nursing care provision in line with existing staffing resources in inpatient and outpatient care services. Digital recruiting tools can be used to tap into additional potential in the external labor market with relatively little effort.
Given that home care accounts for approximately two-thirds of total care, the contribution of family caregivers should not be overlooked when addressing the shortage of skilled workers. They are already helping to relieve the burden on professional caregivers and thus limit the need for skilled workers. In this respect, digital solutions for the home environment that support caregiving by family members or volunteers represent a significant contribution to combating the shortage of skilled workers in the care sector.
The entire event will be accompanied by sign language interpreters (DGS).
