Four-Day Workweek at the Hospital – ViTaWo

The Issue

Hospitals across the country are struggling with staff shortages—from nursing staff to doctors. The German healthcare system faces the challenge of ensuring that nursing and medical care will continue to be available in the future. 

Although more and more young people are entering nursing training programs, the shortage of nursing staff is growing. This is due to the increasing demand for nursing and medical care, as well as short tenure in the profession and the high proportion of part-time workers in nursing. Added to this are high mental and physical workloads, difficulties balancing work with caregiving responsibilities, and a lack of social and institutional recognition. To ensure care provision in the future, it is therefore essential to significantly reduce workloads and make the nursing profession more attractive.

Approach

The interdisciplinary research team from the University of Siegen and TU Dortmund University is collaborating with two hospitals that have different structures and requirements. This combination allows for the development of solutions tailored to different starting conditions, which can later be applied to many hospitals.

• Comprehensive analysis of the current situation: observations of daily hospital operations, interviews, workshops, and surveys
• Identification of process optimizations and efficiency improvements incorporating digital technologies
• Measures to improve collaboration and workflows
• Focus on everyday “time wasters,” such as documentation or communication structures
• Testing of measures and continuous evaluation and adaptation of methods
• The goal is to identify potential savings and measure the impact on job satisfaction and health.

Our department’s focus is on service quality from the perspective of patients and their families. From a service development perspective, we support process restructuring and workshops. 

Objective

The “Four-Day Workweek in Hospitals” (ViTaWo) project aims to reduce the workload on nursing staff and thereby counteract the nursing shortage in the long term. The central objective is to develop a toolkit that hospitals can use to introduce attractive work schedule models. One focus is on testing flexible work schedules that reduce working hours while maintaining full pay. The goal is not to intensify the workload, but to provide genuine relief through modern technology, optimized processes, improved interface management, and better collaboration. 

The project’s results can be flexibly applied according to the requirements of each institution to generate long-term benefits, such as employee retention and recruitment, efficient patient care and patient satisfaction, as well as effective interdisciplinary collaboration.

The “Four-Day Workweek in Hospitals” project is funded by the Hans Böckler Foundation.