Context

According to experts demographic change will cause an increasing number of people requiring care in Germany from a current level of 2.3 million to approx. 3.4 million in 2030. A new direction is needed to face this change; otherwise about 500,000 nursing positions will remain unfilled. The German Federal Employment Agency is already observing a severe shortage of trained geriatric nurses today and has warned of an acute crisis in care provision. A recent study published by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) states that skilled labour from other member states of the European Union (EU) will not be able to cover this shortage. This means that in the foreseeable future, for countries with a similar demographic trend as Germany, there is no alternative as to recruit skilled labour from third countries.

Objective and description of the project

Against this backdrop, the BMWi pilot project will give 100 young people from Viet Nam the opportunity to train as geriatric nurses in Germany. Participants from Viet Nam with the appropriate prior qualifications in healthcare will be eligible to attend an accelerated two-year programme. The training will ensure that the nurses will be well integrated and that they will acquire the German nursing standards from the beginning, which will open up long-term employment prospects for them in Germany. Due to its very young population (60 % of the Vietnamese population was born after 1975), the country has a large workforce. The Vietnamese Government actively endorses the employment mobility of health care professionals and is aware of the benefits of job experience acquired abroad (know-how transfer, remittances, etc.). The prospective findings from the pilot project regarding the opportunities and obstacles in recruiting labour force from third countries to train them in Germany will serve as a model for the German health care sector for hiring foreign skilled workers.

During the entire project, all processes, ranging from the quality of the geriatric nursing training to the cost efficiency, will be continuously monitored.