Nursing Research

Data and Facts
Patient care and nursing represents an important field of health care and social security. Along with medical therapy, it is a key factor in restoring people to health or helping them to live better with illnesses and disabilities.
Due to extensive demographic and epidemiological changes, patient care is subject to a wide-ranging process of change. The problem is no longer whether practices will change but rather how they will change in order to live up to the medical challenges of the future. This perspective applies both to outpatient and inpatient care.
Future developments are expected to increase the importance of patient care. This results not so much from increased amounts of acute care (after accidents or operations) but rather from the rise in long-term or permanently required care services. Firstly, the increased number of patients in need of care can be seen in the rising proportion of elderly people within the overall population. Secondly, the number of small families and single households is also on the rise, corresponding to a reduction in the amount of care provided by families. The reduction of hospital beds and shortening of hospital stays give rise to other, possibly different, demands for care and nursing services, particularly outside of inpatient facilities.
Changes in perceptions as well as the practice and organisation of patient care are unavoidable results of this structural change. In addition, patient care - in terms of both acute and sustained services - is confronted today with the goal of guaranteeing patients the greatest possible independence in handling their everyday lives. Patient care therefore faces challenges that will result in significant quantitative and qualitative changes to the methods and techniques employed.
Even beyond the increasing importance within health policy, one can also measure the position of patient care and nursing based on the fact that a significant portion of the expenditures within the health care system can be attributed to patient care. Patient care and nursing as a service industry therefore also represents a significant segment of the economy.

What Does the BMBF Do?
In view of this major significance of patient care and nursing services within the health care system and the economy, nursing processes must be organised as effectively and efficiently as possible. The funding focus “Applied Patient Care and Nursing Research” will make a lasting contribution in this area. The subsidisation guidelines are aimed at establishing a well founded, evidence-based basis of knowledge for proper patient care and nursing methods and organisation through the development of qualified, application-oriented patient care and nursing research.
Since the start of 2004, four patient care and nursing research associations are being subsidised for an initial period of three years. A total subsidisation duration of six years is planned. The focus is on questions of caring for the elderly and those afflicted with dementia.