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Nurse puts on a compression bandage (symbolic image)
Photo: Sebastian Gollnow / dpa
In the future, nursing students are to receive "appropriate remuneration" for the entire duration of their studies. This was decided by the Bundestag on Thursday. In addition, nursing qualifications from abroad are to be recognised more easily in order to enable foreign skilled workers to find employment. With the Nursing Studies Strengthening Act, the traffic light government wants to make working in the care sector more attractive.
The bill was passed with the majority of the traffic light coalition. The CDU/CSU, which had tabled its own motion, and the AfD voted against. The Left abstained. The Federal Cabinet approved the draft at the end of May. In an ageing society, there is also a need for more young people to work in care, explained Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD) on the occasion of the vote in the Bundestag.
In order to get them excited about the nursing profession, attractive conditions are already needed in university nursing training. Lauterbach emphasized: "We are now also giving students the financial freedom to concentrate fully on their studies."
The Federal Government's Commissioner for Nursing, Claudia Moll (SPD), spoke of an "emancipation of the nursing profession". Good salaries, modernised training and more skills – nursing is on the rise and the attractiveness of the profession is increasing. "We are on the right track here, and we must continue to tread courageously," she said.
So far, the practical part of nursing training at universities has not been remunerated. In the future, this part is to be integrated into the existing financing system for vocational nursing training. To this end, the nursing degree is to be designed as a dual course of study. This means that students who start nursing training at a university conclude a training contract with a provider of the practical part of the training. For this purpose, the latter receives financing from a compensation fund. Students who have already started their studies should also receive remuneration for the remaining period of study.
According to the draft law, foreign nurses could be employed more easily in Germany in the future: they would have to submit fewer documents for the recognition of their degree acquired abroad. In addition, the law is intended to create the possibility of dispensing with a comprehensive equivalence test of the financial statements.
The care sector is suffering from an acute shortage of skilled workers. Associations complain that many homes have to turn away people in need of care despite empty beds because they cannot keep to the staffing ratios.
ani/AFP