VAnything that went wrong in 2021 can safely be forgotten in the new year. This story from Stuttgart is one of the failures from which it is essential to learn something for the future. Last summer, 19 men and women who had completed training as nurses at the Robert Bosch Hospital took their final exams there. Only four of them passed.
First of all, it is a debacle for the 15 who failed, who now have no diploma for their professional life. With a failure rate of almost 80 percent, there is much to suggest that it was not just individual failure that was responsible. Especially since some other participants had already broken off the training before the exam date.
The failure is also a debacle for society as a whole, as nursing staff are in short supply in Germany. According to an analysis by the Competence Center for Securing Skilled Workers, at least 35,000 positions are vacant, and the trend is rising. Ultimately, the matter is a debacle for the Robert Bosch Foundation, which supports the hospital and wanted to turn this training class into a flagship project. In 2017, this was advertised with an “additional offer that goes beyond the legal training requirements”: “Nationwide unique”.
Additional costs 1.3 million euros
The highlight was that the class should consist partly of Germans and partly of refugees who had come from Syria, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, and were looking for a professional future in their new homeland. In addition to the practice and theory of nursing, the participants should also be taught intercultural skills. Instead of the usual three years, the training therefore lasted one year longer, and there were also more staff than usual. The foundation spent 1.3 million euros on its own account in addition to the regular training costs, which the hospitals pay for with money from taxpayers and insured persons.
Others have come up with the idea of using immigration from abroad to do something about the care gap in Germany. The number of skilled workers from abroad in the care of the elderly and the sick has been increasing continuously for years. As Federal Minister of Health, Jens Spahn (CDU), for example, traveled to Mexico and Kosovo to recruit nurses there. According to its own information, the Federal Employment Agency, together with the Society for International Cooperation and the Goethe-Institut, has prepared around 4,000 nursing staff abroad with language courses and bureaucratic support for the move to Germany in the past two years alone. The Federal Agency estimates the dropout rate in these so-called “triple-win programs” at around 10 percent.
Language level A2 was sufficient
So what went so colossally wrong in Stuttgart? In retrospect, the biggest problem is so obvious that one should have known it in advance: the refugees were admitted to the class even if they still had very little knowledge of German. Passing the A2 language test is sufficient, which corresponds to basic knowledge. They should climb the next of a total of six levels between A1 and C2, at which foreign language skills are officially classified in the EU, as part of their nursing training. They were offered German courses for this. Participation was voluntary, however, and there were no obligatory intermediate examinations.
A fateful constellation. “A2 is far too little to start this training,” criticizes Ingrid Hofmann, who trained nursing staff in Frankfurt for more than 30 years. According to their experience, trainees without previous technical knowledge need level C1. The Federal Agency brings the “triple win” participants, who have already completed specialist training in their home countries, to level B1 before moving to Germany and typically estimates nine months for this.
“We have to learn from this”
“Back then, after so many refugees had come to Germany, we wanted to send a political signal,” says Professor Mark Dominik Alscher, Managing Director of the Robert Bosch Hospital. “It was well intentioned, but it didn’t work out well. We have to learn from that.” An advisory board came to the conclusion that the course had exaggerated the principle of personal responsibility. In the meantime, a consulting institute has also been commissioned to evaluate the failure. For this purpose, the majority of participants who failed were interviewed individually. There has been a change at the top of the nursing school, which was responsible for the conception – for different reasons, as Alscher says. He himself was just fresh in office when the supposed flagship course started in 2017.
The Robert Bosch Foundation is the majority owner of the Stuttgart Bosch Group. It is financed from the dividends paid out by the company. The foundation can look back on lush times, with a distribution of 218 million euros, 2018 was the record year so far. Since then, however, income has been falling, for 2020 it was 60 million euros, Bosch is struggling with the upheaval in the auto industry, among other things. The funding volume of the foundation has fallen from 153 to 80 million euros; A savings program with job cuts has been announced for 2022.
1.3 million euros for a blue-eyed training program is no small thing. Clinic manager Alscher nevertheless defends the model project, saying that valuable lessons have been learned from it: “For me, it’s money well invested.” There is no third year.
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