The Forum-DACH, the cooperation platform of hospital technicians from Austria, Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, has set itself the task of forming a joint working group on the subject of the professional profile of technicians in healthcare facilities. A document will be prepared with the help of which the problems related to the professional profile can be presented to the relevant bodies and authorities. In a further step, efforts should be made to anchor a job description in law.
Current situation
The profession of hospital technician does not have a generally recognized job description within the German-speaking area, despite being firmly anchored in the professional groups of the health care system. However, a recognized job description is a prerequisite for providing employers and institutions with sufficient security in the establishment and organization of technical units within health care facilities with regard to correct tasks and competencies, as well as corresponding remuneration systems, via an associated training and competence system.
The dependence of all operational processes in hospitals on technology continues to increase in leaps and bounds. At the same time, the users', operators' and management's understanding and knowledge of technology is decreasing. Without an appropriately trained team of technicians who are well integrated into the decision-making process, operational safety and cost-effective technical management cannot be guaranteed.
Looking at official Austrian data on professions in the health care sector, the hospital technician does not seem to have.
What has so far prevented those responsible at all levels from designing and implementing a concrete job description?? There are probably a number of reasons for this.
In the course of the establishment and development of hospital technology in recent decades, it was not possible, and perhaps not intended, to create similar structures within the hospitals. Many hospitals have set up differently. Organized technical units. In addition in the last years in the course of the so-called restructuring organizationally, without real decision bases, still firmly experimented around and responsibilities were shifted. One thinks of z.B. idiosyncratic assignments of medical technology to IT or the incorporation of technology to FM, without assigning the management focus to the technical unit.
The different sizes of the hospitals made additionally the formation of uniform structures more difficult due to the differently necessary employment depth, -intensity and -complexity for the technology.
The division of the technology into separate areas for construction and operation, house and medical technology, the conscious separation of the technology, in order not to let too large influence develop contributed theirs to it. The linking of the individual areas was sometimes carried out by economists who lacked experience and knowledge in technology, but who gave the impression that they had mastered it all. There was a lack of appropriate documentation to submit to the various authorities. Administrations to enforce the concern of the technicians according to their own professional field. There was and still is a lack of lobbies for it.
This is certainly only a part of the causes that have prevented the implementation of a generally recognized professional profile. In addition, hospital management has not been particularly interested in advocating for the technicians. The reasons are manifold.
Job description basics
Thanks to the documents collected so far from the technician associations (FKT, IHS, oVKT), existing job descriptions from the hospitals as well as other provided work bases, it is possible to design a scheme and build the job description.
The main components of the job description are the scope of duties including authority and the associated competence via education, training and professional experience.
The job description defines the current understanding of the bundled specific requirements and activities based on experience and developments as well as innovations in an overall work, which is officially recognized and recorded in coordination of interests and consensus with the parties involved. Mostly only the important competences are included. Activities and their objectives. They should reflect the essential characteristics of the profession, such as the most important tasks and absolutely necessary competences as well as behaviors.
Within the German-speaking countries, there is little difference in the tasks, even the technical training offered is halay comparable. Institutional training courses can hardly be found, with the exception of the master's course for management of technology in health care at the Donsau University in Krems, together with the oVKT.
Hospital technology in its full range of demands as well as the tasks resulting from it, even if its importance is seen in relation to the functionality and operation of the health care facilities, is difficult to learn within the normal educational path in a single training course. Only in isolated cases are regular studies offered in German-speaking countries that provide a graduate degree in hospital technology. Additional trainings for handicraft professions are offered only recently.
What conditions are we dealing with at the moment:
To the occupation of the hospital technician there is with the perception by third no clear picture over the actual activity and function, thus no good conception of an occupation picture belonging to it.
The profession certainly belongs to the more complex activities, is unfortunately hardly transported with its tasks to the outside and has also no uniform occupation designation.
It is not possible to reduce the professional activity to a profession in the traditional sense, since it represents a bundle of different professions and also of partial aspects of different professions.
There is a lack of common understanding in the general public what activities are associated with hospital technology. For this also the regulated training is missing and there is currently no institutionally defined job description for example by the hospital technician associations.
With regard to the new development of a professional profile – i.e. the institutional definition z. B. by the associations or the legislator- these starting points must be accepted and taken into account in the development and enforcement of a professional image.
Summary and outlook
For the time being, the working group will create a job description at the top management level of technical management. This means that after its completion, all components must be broken down to the area level and then to the clerk and IH group level. For this extensive work, a distribution of tasks to experts within the associations is necessary.
