The Federal Cabinet approved the draft of the Nursing Competence Act yesterday, Wednesday. The aim of the act is to involve specialist nursing staff more closely in patient care and to make better use of their skills. This would enhance the status of their work and motivate them. In addition, doctors would be relieved of some of their workload and those in need of care would receive the professional attention they require.

The draft bill contains the following provisions with regard to professional nursing care:

• In the future, specialist nursing staff should be able to provide ‘more services than before’ and certain services previously reserved for doctors on their own responsibility. In particular, they are to be given ‘more powers and expanded options’ in wound management, in the management of diabetes and dementia, and in the context of follow-up prescriptions.
• The Nursing Professions Act is to make it clear that specialist nursing staff are allowed to perform medical tasks.
• The tasks of specialist nursing staff in the provision of care are to be described in detail in a project carried out together with the nursing professional organisations. This so-called ‘model scope of practice’ is to serve as a basis for further development steps with regard to the legal powers of specialist nursing staff.
• The ‘organisations of the nursing professions at federal level’ are to be strengthened and systematically involved in the legal tasks that affect them.

However, the implementation of the law is uncertain because new elections are due in Germany and the current federal government no longer has the necessary majority in the Bundestag.