HCEU international workshop, September 2016, Vienna (AT)

On September 22nd the project partners of HCEU met with Austrian stakeholders in a very fruitful workshop on recognition praxis within nursing and elderly care. The Austrian professionals and experts have been presented with a new further advanced draft of the HCEU matrix on "Nursing" and have been asked to reflect together with the project partners on the validity of the matrix content and structure.

The Austrian stakeholders intensively discussed with the project partners over two sessions the status quo of the nursing matrix and how it needs to be further improved in order to map competence development within nursing. A number of issues have been discussed in this context such as legal aspects of task delegation, the role of community nursing, terminology to be used with regard to assisting and suporting others, prescription of medication and the role of family within nursing. The discussions provided very fruitful thought-provoking impulses in order to further develop and improve the matrix. A new draft matrix will be developed in the upcoming months to be further validated within the consortium and in further expert workshops in Germany, Greece and Hungary.

Besides those very interesting discussions on the HCEU matrix very interesting presentations enriched the workshops programm. Dr. Susanne Weiss from the Federal Ministry of Health and Women’s Affairs in Austria provided a comprehensive overview about recognition praxis which provided very valuable background information for the attending Austrian stakeholders but also the project partners who are researching on this topic across the project partner countries. Complementary Prof. Sandra Bohlinger from the Technical University of Dresden introduced the partners to the research background on the recognition of prior learning in general and within health care in particular in order to allow the participants to reiceive an inside view on an additional perspective of recognition.

The workshop has been an additional milestone towards the completion of work on the HCEU matrix on "Nursing" thanks to the valuable and constructive input received from the stakeholders but also due to the dedicated exchanges of views and expertise. We greatly thank the Austrian experts and stakeholders who joined our HCEU workshop in Vienna (AT) for their outstanding support and contributions.