Generation Z – Die Werte angehender Ärzte im Spannungsfeld zum künftigen Spitalalltag

The Swiss healthcare system has been undergoing a profound process of change for years, and is therefore in a rebuilding phase. Swiss hospitals are faced by considerable challenges including advancing digitalisation, enormous cost pressure and an increasing shortage of skilled workers. In the wake of this development, demographic changes continue, resulting in, on the one hand, noticeable ageing of the workforce and, on the other hand, a lack of young professionals, leading to problems in the maintenance of hospitals. For the latter, doctors play a central role and use their expertise to ensure that medical care continues to be provided. However, the medical profession is also struggling with the acquisition of young talents, and even today, are unable to fill many positions. Against this backdrop, Generation Z will be entering the hospital job market as a new age group in the coming years. The knowledge gained so far about this generation suggests that they sometimes work in a way that is fundamentally different to those that came before them, and this suggests that the working environment has to adapt to new events that have been, by and large, unknown to it thus far.
This starting point prompted the author to research the values and job-related ideas of the up-and-coming doctors of Generation Z as part of a quantitative and qualitative study and to collect the data from medical students of human medicine from the medical faculties of the universities of Bern, Basel and Zurich. The knowledge gained is intended to show, on the one hand, the conditions under which Generation Z doctors can envisage a longer-term career as a hospital doctor, and on the other hand, the results should be made available to hospitals in the form of recommendations for action so that they can adapt their current working and employment conditions to the requirements of future Generation Z doctors in order to counteract the impending shortage of doctors.
Against this backdrop, the research results obtained revealed interesting findings. The author was able to show, among other things, that Generation Z doctors can be acquired and retained in particular through "soft values" and that monetary incentives, for example, are hardly a motivation that will keep this age-group permanently satisfied in working life. It also emerged that family, friends and leisure time are often more important to this age group than professional careers, and these findings alone are likely to lead to significant changes in hospitals in the future.