Although managers in care management bear an immense responsibility for ensuring high-quality care in hospitals and care facilities, existing qualification programs often do not meet this requirement. This is the conclusion of a study by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training. For three years now, the Innovative Healthcare B.Sc. course offered by Hof University of Applied Sciences at its location in Kronach has offered an alternative to many traditional further training courses in the healthcare sector and an interesting career option. The 38-year-old nurse Stefanie Poppinga was one of the first to complete this course and reports on her experiences.
“I have children and at some point I definitely didn’t want to work shifts anymore. On the contrary: I always had a stronger desire to develop myself further,” says the Kronach native when asked about her motivation for starting her studies in 2022. At some point, she happened to hear a radio advertisement from Hof University of Applied Sciences, which drew her attention to the then brand-new “Innovative Healthcare” course. “As I had always ruled out a purely distance learning course, for example, this offer right on my doorstep was of course very interesting and I started to find out more about it,” says the mother of two.
Healthcarecourse in Kronach: Stefanie Poppinga; source: private;
Career, family, further training
Her professional career is quite typical of that of many nursing and healthcare professionals: after completing her vocational baccalaureate, Stefanie Poppinga began studying architecture and civil engineering in Coburg, which she quickly abandoned in order to successfully complete her training as a healthcare and nursing professional in 2010 in Kronach and later at the Bad Nauheim School of Nursing. Back in her old home town, she then worked in the hospitals in Coburg and Sonneberg before her first daughter was finally born in 2016. And this is where the first difficulties began: “After a year of parental leave, returning to work with a child was very complicated for me to manage and I perhaps found it more difficult than others,” admits Stefanie Poppinga. She therefore decided to quit her job at the hospital and help out in her sister’s outpatient care service instead.
The right time in life
After the birth of her second daughter and the subsequent parental leave, she then took a job in a retirement home in Rothenkirchen, where she has been working part-time ever since and where she finally decided to continue her training:
There are simply moments in life when it just fits. And that’s how it was when I came across the new course in Kronach. It was immediately clear to me that it was a perfect match for my knowledge and interests.”
Stefanie Poppinga
“There are simply moments in life when it just fits. And that’s how it was when I came across the new course in Kronach. It was immediately clear to me that it was a perfect match for my knowledge and interests.” According to Stefanie Poppinga, the wide-ranging knowledge transfer, the digital components and the focus on process management and psychology in particular contributed to her decision to study again. “Of course, the Innovative Healthcare course also includes nursing components, which I was already familiar with, but that was less important to me. Most of it was new and really very exciting overall.”
Quickly creating functional structures
Even the fact that she was one of the first to enrol on the new course, which claims to train bridge builders between technology and the social professions, didn’t bother her: “Of course, at the beginning you still noticed that structures first had to be created and set up on site in Kronach on the new Lucas Cranach Campus, but these uncertainties and the improvisation of the early days quickly disappeared. Today, the courses on offer are very well and sensibly organized,” says Stefanie Poppinga, who is now in her sixth semester and writing her Bachelor’s thesis on the topic of a modern telematics infrastructure in inpatient care. This is precisely what the future holds, because in her experience, the care and social sector in Germany as a whole is extremely outdated, particularly in terms of technology, and there is an enormous need for action. “This is exactly where the course comes in: You gain enormous knowledge in the areas of digitalization, project management and project support in order to be able to work as a link between the actors involved and develop the working environment.” And this is exactly what she intends to do now: “I want to use my studies to bring about improvements and thus improve the quality of care,” says Stefanie Poppinga. In any case, she now wants to continue working directly with people, but she is now particularly interested in starting a career in the training sector so that she can pass on the knowledge she has acquired to as many people as possible.
Application
The concept of the course is currently being adapted based on the findings of the first few years. Applications can then be submitted again from May 2026 for the winter semester 2026/2027.
About the “Innovative Healthcare” degree course
The course is aimed at graduates of grammar schools or technical and vocational colleges, but also at people who already work in the healthcare or IT sector and would like to continue their education.
The course is based on four pillars and one specialization. In the “Fundamentals of Healthcare” area, the foundation is laid with the acquisition of knowledge such as basic medical principles or epidemiology and healthcare policy. Another core area is dedicated to the subject area of “applied informatics”. Seminars on data analysis and business intelligence or on internet and app technologies are examples of modules in this area. In the core area of “health technology”, the curriculum includes exciting lectures and exercises on topics such as robotics or assistance systems that support everyday life. The fourth pillar of the course is management basics and methodological knowledge. Here, students gain an insight into project management or quality management, for example. At the end of the course, students can specialize in one of three areas: There is a choice of modules on nursing, applied psychology or social work/social management.
After completing the course, students can, for example, work in professions that implement modern technology in existing areas of healthcare, e.g. in hospitals, nursing homes, but also in the medical technology industry or with software providers.
