Digitalization and new technologies in care – concepts and potentials for nursing care provision

Abstract

BackgroundIn Germany,wehaveahigh demand for nursing care on the one hand and,onthe other hand ahuge shortageofnurses. For the area of long-termcare, it is forecast that there will be as hortageo fn ursing staff of around 307,000 individuals by 2035. This results in asupply gap of about 500,000 nurses in the overall nursing care sector (Radke 2020). Schwinger et al. (2019) projectthat if the trend for the need of nursing care is extrapolated, it will increase from 590,000 individuals in 2019 to 720,000 by 2030 and to 980,000 individuals employed in nursing care by 2060. In relativet erms, this represents an increase of 67%. Differentiated into inpatientand outpatient care, these projections meanthat about 100,000 more positions will be needed in inpatient long-term care alone, and about 700,000 individuals should be employed in care by 2060, to meet the demand. In ambulatory care, an increase in needed staff of 220,000 is projected by 2030 (Schwinger et al. 2019). In these projections, however, it must be taken into account that as hortage of nurses can also be observed in hospitalsa nd rehabilitation clinics.Against this background, the hope is that new technology will, and can, support nurses in their work. To date, however, there has been little research conducted on required competencies for nurses to work appropriately with new technologies in nursing (Maalouf et al. 2018). Professional nursing will haveto meet new requirements in terms of professional competencies, as they will not only havetoidentify nursing needs, but will also havetobeable to plan, and use, the new technologies in line with the needs of the person in need of care, so that high-quality health and nursing care can be provided. The unanswered questions about new technologies in nursing care include: Why do we need them? To compensatefor nursing staff shortages and/or to optimize nursingprocesses? To support and/or facilitate nursing work?T osupport the autonomy, independence and self-determination of people in need of care?F urther questions are: What new technologies do we need?What does the human-technology interaction look Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY 4.0