Across Europe, the demand of the health sector for highly qualified nurses is great and growing. According to the German Federal Statistical Office of Germany (DESTATIS), care dependency across Germany is projected to increase by up to 50% in the 2007-2030 period. As employers, Medical institutions,, are looking to recruit nurses (job applicants) who have acquired the required skill set. Specifically, they need knowledgeable employees who are eligible to reliably perform certain tasks in over time. Obtaining the required skills is not only achieved by means of curricular coursework. Nurses need to practice and implement the learning material, and develop their level of proficiency by providing care in various situations over time. The key challenges that the Pro-Nursing project aims to investigate:
Work-based education and training has a considerable impact on improving job performance of nurses, and therefore detecting and compensating existing lacks in the nursing knowledge domain is critical. In this project, nurses, medical supervisors (employers), educators, and researchers from the knowledge management and HRM disciplines, are collaborating to create solutions to the aforementioned challenges.
Objectives :Within the German nursing context, PRO-NURSING aims at bridging between tasks, knowledge domains and nursing curricula, the result of which could serve as a benchmark for other European states. The triple attributes of nursing will be considered dynamically by incorporating evidence of change with respect to standards and protocols of nursing. The dedicated system will be developed as a web-based application with an ontological back-end. This is innovative, especially in supporting nursing educators and supervisors to sustain the quality of nursing care in both clinics and hospitals. Pro-Nursing is the descendant project of Med-Assess.