Qualified professionals can suport doctors

Pinkafeld, 8th of October 2024 - Working in a hospital can be challenging for doctors in many respects. Among other things, extensive documentation tasks, legal requirements and suboptimal IT solutions in the Austrian healthcare system take up a lot of valuable time. Added to this are challenges in the area of personnel and the ever-increasing care expectations of patients.

Selina Osztovics, a research assistant in the Department of Health & Social Affairs at University of Applied Sciences Burgenland, examined medical and nursing documentation in Austria's healthcare system in her master's thesis from the Health Promotion and Human Resource Management degree programme. Her work was honoured with both the Health Research Award 2024 and the Pannonia Research Award.

Qualified professionals as a supportive measure

In addition to a comprehensive literature review, she also conducted expert interviews with medical and nursing staff from various facilities throughout Austria. Her findings show that numerous measures can be employed to improve the documentation process. First and foremost, the deployment of medical documentation specialists would be one solution. UAS Burgenland is the only university in Austria to offer a Bachelor's degree programme in Health Management and Health Promotion that trains these urgently needed specialists. From the 2024/25 academic year onwards, the compulsory elective subject Medical Documentation will also lead to a Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) qualification.

The graduates are already being deployed at Gesundheit Burgenland, for example. "We have had extremely positive experiences with medical documentation assistants at Oberwart Hospital in the past. The graduates of UAS Burgenland provide us with significant support in optimising examination and treatment processes. They also make a major contribution to seamless patient documentation and proper diagnosis and service coding," emphasises Commercial Director Marc Seper.

We need better e-health in Austria

Delegating documentation activities to specialised staff is therefore one way of relieving the burden on doctors. The author of the study also suggests scrutinising the extent of documentation. "In healthcare facilities, the same data is often collected in different places. This leads to duplication, which wastes time but is not very efficient." Networking plays a central role here. Communication technologies - also known as e-health - need to be expanded and standardised. There are too many systems in circulation - often even within the same institution. Staff also need to be supported with regular training.

"There is an urgent need for greater awareness of the topic of documentation," says Osztovics. "It would also be important to integrate these digital skills into training programmes." Currently, hardly any knowledge is taught in medical studies. Doctors and, above all, nurses, who are ultimately 99% of the executing authority, should also be involved in the development of software solutions in order to cover all the needs of this group.

New legal framework conditions are important

The fact that the task of dokumentation is time-consuming and often unpopular is nothing new. "Nevertheless, the changes in working conditions in recent years, whether due to the Covid-19 pandemic, digitalisation or the shortage of skilled personnel, have shown how much room for improvement there is in some areas of documentation," emphasises Osztovics.

The opportunities for documentation activities lie not only in digitalisation, but also in legislation. Legal changes at various points could counteract the increasing time required. If there is a well-developed documentation software system in place that is supported and comprehensively applied by all those involved, there is a good opportunity to positively overcome future challenges.

About the author

Selina Osztovics, BA MSc, born in 1998 and living in Oberwart, completed both of her studies at UAS Burgenland and has been working as a research assistant in the Department of Health & Social Affairs at UAS Burgenland since 2021. Her research focuses on "workplace health promotion, workplace health management, evaluation of health interventions in the field of health promotion". She also teaches in the field of "Scientific Work".

More about the degree programme

Bachelor's degree course, Business studies with a focus on health promotion - 6 semesters - Organisational form: work-linked (courses Monday to Wednesday) - Academic degree "Bachelor of Arts in Business, BA" - Place of study: Pinkafeld campus - Admission: Matura, university entrance qualification or vocational maturity examination, preparatory course with additional qualification examination.

You can find more information about the degree programmes at FH Burgenland at www.fh-burgenland.at.

Further information:
Mag^.a Christiane Staab
Marketing & Communication
Fachhochschule Burgenland GmbH
Tel: +43 (0)5 7705 3537
E-Mail: christiane.staab@hochschule-burgenland.at