Community Health Nurses for safe healthcare

23.05.2023 14:06

Health care in Germany already has alarming gaps, especially in the area of basic care, which are likely to expand and become more numerous. Countermeasures are therefore urgently needed. The German Professional Association for Nursing Professions (DBfK), the Association of Democratic Doctors (vdää*) and the Association of Democratic Pharmacists (VdPP) have presented common key points in which they call for reforms to the care structure.

In order to ensure basic health care for the population, nurses, doctors and pharmacists have now come together for the first time and published a joint key points paper. “All three professions are concerned with ensuring that people receive health care that offers the greatest possible quality of life and self-determination,” says DBfK Federal Managing Director Bernadette Klapper, explaining the three associations’ initiative.

“Prevention, health promotion and social factors are recognized in their influence on the state of health and the course of illness,” says Nadja Rakowitz, the managing director of the vdää*. “The success of health care, especially in the case of chronic illnesses, depends largely on taking into account the individual lifestyle and living conditions of the patient.” A health system that is geared to these requirements must therefore work locally and combine medical and nursing services with behavioral and social prevention measures as needed. “We already have noticeable gaps in care close to home, which affect both general practitioners’ practices, pharmacies and nursing care,” states Udo Puteanus from the VdPP. “With their interprofessional nature, primary care centers can offer the population in the catchment area close, low-threshold access to health care.”

In order to ensure the health and well-being of the population in the future, DBfK, vdää* and VdPP are calling for three measures for a substantial further development of the health system:

1. Multiprofessional teamwork of the health and social professions: Health is a complex, biopsychosocial event that depends on the interaction of different professions.

2. Introduction of Community Health Nurses (CHN) to strengthen population-related health (“public health”): Good health care requires new professional profiles with expanded skills.

3. Promoting primary care centers: This is where health promotion, prevention and person-centered medical, pharmaceutical and nursing care as well as social work can be ideally anchored.

DBfK, vdää* and VdPP will present the position paper and the demands formulated in it in a digital event on May 24, 2023 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. and discuss the demands with Prof. Dr. Kerstin Hämel (Bielefeld University), Lukas Waidhas (Community Health Nurse, Hamburg-Veddel Polyclinic), Michael Janßen (general medicine specialist and family doctor, Berlin), Michael Weller (Federal Ministry of Health).

The position paper is available for download here:

https://www.dbfk.de/media/docs/download/DBfK-Positionen/Positionspapier_vdaeae_vdpp_DBfK.pdf