[Qualification concept for delegation of medical tasks to nonmedical professional groups. The "Greifswalder 3-level model"].

To manage the current demographics and the expected medical, nursing, and social care needs of the population, structural changes are needed in the German health care system. On the regional level, there is a shortage of general practitioners in Germany. In the future, the number of affected regions will likely increase. These trends require new support strategies, which include the delegation of medical tasks to nonphysician professionals of which nurses and medical assistants are the primary profession. Thus, they will expand their traditional scope of work. However, their traditional training does not qualify them to perform medical tasks responsibly and with high quality. Hence, there is a need for further development of advanced training programs. The goal is to tailor modular advanced training to the specific support needs of the patients. A recent law (GKV-Versorgungsstrukturgesetz, GKV-VStG, 1 January 2012) was passed that specifies and extends the delegation options of medical tasks beyond the restrictions defined in previous German legislation (§ 63, SGB V in 2008). In this article, we present a three-stage model for qualifying nonphysician medical professionals for defined ranges of medical tasks.