One federal standard, 16 Länder: what the new German nursing assistant training asks of the practical-training record
On 1 January 2027, Germany replaces 27 separately regulated Land-level nursing assistant and helper trainings with a single federal qualification. The Pflegefachassistenzgesetz (PflFAssG) creates a paid training of 18 months full-time, or up to 36 months part-time. Its training and examination regulation, the PflFAssAPrV, has been in force since 10 June 2026. The expert commission handed the framework curriculum and framework training plan to the ministries on 30 June 2026, and the BIBB published them online on 29 July 2026.
Much of the debate so far has been about curricula. This post looks at a less visible requirement that every Pflegeschule must meet from the first cohort: a practical-training record that holds across every placement and every provider.
What the regulation requires
The training comprises at least 1,050 hours of theoretical and practical teaching and 1,280 hours of practical training (§ 2(1) PflFAssAPrV). Anlage 3 divides the practical hours as follows:
PLACEMENT | HOURS |
Compulsory placement in general inpatient acute care | 240 |
Compulsory placement in general inpatient long-term care | 240 |
Compulsory placement in home care (acute and long-term care in people’s homes) | 240 |
Extension of the placement held with the training provider | 440 |
Hours at the school's discretion in general and specialist fields | 120 |
Total | 1,280 |
Until 31 December 2032, the inpatient acute care or home care placement may be reduced by up to 120 hours, with the difference added to the discretionary hours.
Three provisions shape the documentation that follows from this:
• The record itself (§ 4(4)). Trainees keep the Ausbildungsnachweis, the practical-training record, in writing or electronically. The Pflegeschule must design it so that it shows the practical hours were completed in line with the training plan, and how the trainee's competence developed. The school must take account of the model template the BIBB is developing with the expert commission (§ 93(4)).
• Praxisanleitung (§ 5). Practice supervision must cover at least 10% of the practical hours of each placement, planned and structured on the basis of the training plan. Practice supervisors are also explicitly required to keep trainees writing up their record.
• Absence (§ 2(3)). Absence can be counted towards the training only up to 25% of the hours of a compulsory placement. Someone therefore has to keep a running total, placement by placement.
Why this is a design question, not an administrative one
The regulation sets out what the record has to show, not how. That leaves each Pflegeschule with three design tensions.
Hours and competence in one document. The record must show compliance with the plan and also how competence developed. A simple hours log meets the first need and misses the second. A reflective portfolio does the reverse.
One record, many settings. A single trainee moves between hospital, residential care and home care, often across several providers linked by cooperation agreements (§ 10). Long-term and home care providers are where much of the new training will take place. They are also where structured practice supervision is often hardest to organise.
Individual pathways. Part-time training, recognition of prior learning and the option to reduce the acute care or home care placement mean the training plan, and the record that tracks it, will vary from trainee to trainee.
The timing is less tight than it looks
The start date is 1 January 2027, but most schools are not starting their first cohort then. Schools in the federal BAFzA register that give a 2027 start date mostly plan to begin between August and October. That leaves a window to design the record deliberately rather than adapt a generalist-programme form under pressure.
Questions worth settling now
1. How will the competence areas in the framework training plan appear in the record, and at what points will progress be assessed?
2. Who signs what, and when: practice supervisors, school teaching staff on practice visits (§ 7), and the trainee?
3. How will hours, absence and the 10% supervision minimum be totalled across providers, and who checks them?
4. Paper or electronic? Both are permitted. If electronic, what data protection agreements are needed with each partner organisation?
5. How will the record feed the school's end-of-training report on practical performance before the state examination?
Where we fit
MyKnowledgeMap builds MyProgress, a digital system for recording and assessing practice-based learning. It is used in nursing, healthcare and veterinary education in the UK and internationally. MyProgress handles placement records, hours, structured assessments and sign-off by practice supervisors, and its interface is available in German.
Contact us if you would like to see a practical-training record in MyProgress, in English or German, or simply to compare notes on how your school is approaching it.
