Teaching digital competences in nursing education—a comparative analysis of the federal and state framework curricula

Abstract

Background and objective: The digital transformation of healthcare requires changed competences in the nursing professions. The reform of nursing education opens up the opportunity to anchor the requisite content in vocational education. The framework curricula of the expert commission (“Rahmenpläne der Fachkommission nach § 53 Pflegeberufegesetz”) form the basis for the federal states to create their own framework curricula. This paper examines to what extent and in what form the framework curricula take up digitalisation. Material and methods: The framework curricula were investigated in an explicative-qualitative content analysis between August and October 2021. First, the frequency of previously defined keywords was determined. This was followed by a systematic context analysis. Results: Merely six federal states had created their own framework curriculum; the others used the federal framework curriculum, which only addresses the acquisition of competences in the field of digitalisation to a small extent. Digitalisation was addressed to varying degrees in the federal stateʼs own framework plans but only selectively overall. Recommendations for practical exercise formats were hardly given. Discussion: The acquisition of competences in the area of digitalisation forms the foundation for later professional life and is an important component of the digital transformation. In the context of the possibility of modifying nursing education until 2024, the topic should be taken into focus more strongly. Improvements can also be made directly at technical and vocational schools as well as universities since the framework curricula are sometimes only of a recommendatory nature.