Each coin has a polymer ring in the characteristic colour of the professional group depicted. The first motif is ‘Care’.
The coin motif, designed by Peter Lasch from Berlin, impresses with its successful narrative and multi-layered composition. Its central element - the hand in need of protection, which is held in both hands - is focussed by the polymer ring. The ring is in mint turquoise, the typical colour of the nursing profession. The hands symbolise trust and warmth, while at the same time highlighting the complex tasks involved in nursing care today. The people on the left and right at the edge emphasise that the need for care can affect anyone in any generation. With the implied architecture, the motif points to the often underestimated organisational part of care. Beyond this context, the hands depicted on the coin stand for all carers - whether professional or private - who take on controlling and caring functions in complex situations: from caring for premature babies to accompanying the very elderly.
It is not only during the pandemic that carers have shown how important their profession is, which is also a vocation for many employees. This also applies to the volunteers and the many private individuals who are caring for their relatives with great dedication.
The nursing profession is more strongly influenced by historically evolved structures than many other professions. Even in antiquity and the Middle Ages, care existed, which in our culture was significantly influenced by Christianisation, primarily through religious institutions. For almost two millennia, care has been strongly related to the commandment of Christian charity. Towards the end of the 19th century, non-religious nursing care became increasingly important and was organised for the first time in the ‘Professional Organisation of Nurses in Germany’. In recent decades, the nursing profession has become very differentiated. Scientific advances, including in medicine, nutritional science and psychology, have multiplied nursing knowledge. Professional nursing opens up new tasks in the field of prevention (e.g. in the context of school health), in primary care (e.g. home visits in cooperation with doctors in private practice) or as highly qualified specialists for certain groups of people (e.g. in the treatment of chronic wounds or in counselling). There are currently more than one million nurses working in Germany (healthcare and nursing staff, healthcare and paediatric nurses, geriatric nurses with at least three years of training). According to estimates by the German Professional Association for Nursing Professions (DBfK), 200,000 additional positions are needed. In addition, 500,000 carers will reach retirement age in the next ten to twelve years.
