The Health Research Network is the point of contact for field of action 3 "Attractive employment conditions". Andrea Kuhn is in charge of the sub-field "Maintaining and strengthening employees' health and ability to work". The mission is: "Maintaining and strengthening the health and ability to work of nursing staff in hospitals as well as outpatient and inpatient long-term care facilities is considered a key contribution to securing the nursing care of tomorrow. In addition to appropriate further training, targeted promotional, preventative and rehabilitative occupational health management services for nursing staff are to be further developed, offered in line with demand and publicized. This also includes offerings aimed at designing age-appropriate working conditions in the care sector" (FQI 2.0 p. 40).

The series of conferences on health promotion and prevention in the care sector

A nationwide specialist conference was established as an initial offering, which deals annually with scientific findings and practical examples of occupational health management (OHM) so that care professionals can successfully manage their work tasks and maintain their health. In addition, a network of stakeholders in the field of OHM is promoted (cf. ibid.).

The implementation of the symposium developed dynamically: When the Rhineland-Palatinate accident insurance fund promoted the idea of a joint symposium in Rhineland-Palatinate during the working meetings on the agreement in November 2017, network coordinator Andrea Kuhn was able to use her expertise in the field of health promotion and care to convince the accident insurers that the Health Research Network would be a competent cooperation partner for their concerns. In further coordination loops with the employers' liability insurance association, the university in Ludwigshafen emerged as a suitable conference venue. Another cooperation partner was the Rhineland-Palatinate State Chamber of Nursing, which, as a self-governing body of professional nursing, has a great interest in maintaining the health of nursing professionals and also has a direct line to its members with the chamber magazine and its newsletter. In the meantime, the series of conferences on health promotion and prevention in nursing has developed from the kick-off event; further information on the conferences in 2019, 2020 and 2023 can be found here.

Health promotion projects

The second agreed contribution also has great potential for the Health Research Network: "Against the backdrop of the skilled workers initiative, the universities are increasingly addressing the contexts of working conditions and quality of care in nursing and are participating in projects and networking with a focus on prevention, health promotion and rehabilitation of nursing staff"(ibid. p. 41).

Project support and evaluation of the debureaucratization of care

Regarding the "debureaucratization of care", a sub-field of action of field of action 3 "Attractive employment conditions",, the following can be read: "The universities support and evaluate innovative projects to streamline unnecessary bureaucratic and administrative processes. They promote the necessary development and further training processes for digital information and communication technologies in nursing. In addition, they support competence-oriented interdisciplinary professional cooperation, e.g. in the reduction of resource-intensive multiple documentation of the individual professional groups in the healthcare sector" (ibid. p. 39).

This contribution reflects the competencies of the research network in its internal and external networking and offers ideal docking points for the development of research and development projects that relieve and support nursing practice. It was therefore possible to incorporate the text into the agreement in close coordination with the president of the university and in consensus with the FQI stakeholders from the other Rhineland-Palatinate universities. The Health Research Network is already working on several application concepts for corresponding research projects.