About Altenpflege

Altenpflege

Altenpflege — subtitled "Vorsprung durch Wissen" (ahead through knowledge) — is the German specialist magazine for nursing professionals in elderly care, published monthly by Vincentz Network in Hanover since 1976. Where its sister title Altenheim addresses care-home management, Altenpflege speaks to the nursing staff themselves: qualified nurses, nursing-service managers and trainees working in residential homes, day-care and outpatient elderly care. Each monthly issue delivers around 60 pages of news, topic sections, specialist articles and certified training modules covering dementia and palliative care, care management and care practice, law and medicine — supplemented by product information, book tips, education offers, monthly distance-learning units and a job market. With IVW-audited circulation of around 10,000 sold copies and a readership the publisher quantifies as 71 percent of all German home directors, 44 percent of nursing-service managers and 58 percent of qualified nursing staff, it is the leading journal of its field.

Overview

Elderly-care nursing is Germany's largest nursing discipline — hundreds of thousands of qualified nurses and assistants caring for a rapidly aging population across residential homes, day-care facilities and home-care services. Their work combines medical competence, psychosocial skill and legal responsibility under conditions of chronic staff shortage and high documentation demands. Altenpflege addresses this professional reality with a program built around three functions: informing (news and topic sections on the developments that affect nursing practice), qualifying (specialist articles and training modules that build professional competence), and connecting (the job market, education offers and event tips that structure professional careers).

The editorial mix reflects the breadth of geriatric nursing. Dementia care — the field's defining clinical challenge, as the majority of residential-care residents live with cognitive impairment — gets standing coverage: care concepts, communication techniques, dealing with challenging behavior, and the legal and ethical questions of freedom-restricting measures. Palliative care and end-of-life support form a second pillar, addressing the reality that care homes are places where people die and nurses need both the clinical and the human competence for that responsibility. Care management and care practice cover the organizational side: care planning, documentation, quality management, and the leadership tasks of ward and nursing-service managers. Law and medicine translate the regulatory and medical developments — from new care legislation to wound management, pain therapy and pharmacology — into nursing practice. The monthly distance-training modules (Fernfortbildungen) let readers earn continuing-education qualifications from the print issue, a valued feature in a profession with mandatory training requirements.

History

Altenpflege was first published in 1976 by the Hanover specialist publisher Vincentz Network — fourteen years after its sister title Altenheim, and at a moment when geriatric nursing was professionalizing into a distinct discipline with its own training paths, knowledge base and professional identity. The 1970s saw the expansion of the Altenpflege vocational training, the growth of the residential-care sector, and the first generation of nursing professionals who understood themselves not as auxiliary staff but as a profession with its own expertise.

The magazine's five decades track the profession's transformation. The introduction of long-term care insurance in 1995 created the modern care market with its defined service levels, documentation requirements and quality inspections — all of which reshaped nursing work and the magazine's coverage. The 2000s brought the academization debate, new nursing legislation, and the growing recognition of dementia as the central clinical challenge. The 2010s added the generalist nursing training reform (the Pflegeberufegesetz, fully effective from 2020), which merged the previously separate geriatric, general and pediatric nursing trainings — a reform the magazine covered intensively for its readership of geriatric specialists. The COVID-19 pandemic put elderly-care nurses at the center of public attention, honoring their work while exposing the staffing crisis; the subsequent years have been dominated by the skilled-worker shortage, working-conditions debates, and the digitalization of care documentation. Through each phase, Altenpflege maintained its monthly rhythm and its professional focus, growing with its readership from a trade paper into the profession's leading medium.

Coverage and Content

Each issue's program follows the nursing professional's information needs. The news and topic sections open the issue with current developments: care-policy decisions, new research findings, court rulings affecting nursing practice, and the sector's personnel and economic news. The specialist articles (Fachbeiträge) provide the in-depth professional content — clinical topics from wound care to nutrition, psychosocial topics from biography work to dealing with grief, and organizational topics from duty rostering to quality circles.

Dementia and palliative care receive the sustained attention their importance demands: person-centered care concepts, validation and other communication approaches, the design of dementia-friendly environments, pain assessment in non-communicative patients, and the ethical frameworks for end-of-life decisions. Care management and care practice address the leadership level: the tasks of nursing-service and ward managers, from staff leadership to interface management with physicians, therapists and relatives. Law and medicine translate external developments into practice: new documentation requirements, liability questions, medication management, and the medical knowledge — from common geriatric syndromes to emergency response — that nursing professionals need.

The training modules are a distinctive feature: monthly distance-learning units through which readers can earn certified continuing education, directly from the magazine. Product information keeps readers current on care aids, digital tools and consumables; book tips and education offers guide professional development; the job market connects the profession's supply and demand in a sector defined by staff shortage.

Organization and Ownership

Altenpflege is published by Vincentz Network GmbH & Co. KG of Hanover, the specialist publishing house for the care, social and healthcare sectors, whose portfolio spans the management title Altenheim, the outpatient-care title Häusliche Pflege, books, digital media, the Vincentz academy for professional training, events and market research. The publishing house's shareholders established the LebensWerte foundation in 2026 to recognize achievements improving elderly and long-term care.

The editorial team combines specialist journalists with contributors from nursing practice and science — nursing scientists, experienced practitioners, legal experts in care law, and physicians writing for the nursing audience. The publisher's reader analysis documents the magazine's reach with unusual precision: in the widest readership circle, the magazine reaches 162,914 persons — 71 percent of all German home directors, 44 percent of all nursing-service managers and 58 percent of all qualified nursing staff. The core target group comprises 16,115 nursing-service managers and 248,932 additional qualified professionals in care homes. Commercially, the magazine runs on subscriptions and IVW-audited circulation — 9,918 sold copies including 1,469 e-paper in the third quarter of 2025 — plus advertising from the care sector's suppliers: care aids, digital systems, training providers and employers recruiting the scarce nursing professionals through the job market.

Digital Presence

The magazine's digital home is altenpflege-online.net, which carries daily care-sector news, the magazine's article highlights, and digital extensions of the print content between the monthly issues. The e-paper edition serves the growing share of subscribers who read digitally — nearly 1,500 e-paper copies in the current audit — and the website's archive provides a searchable professional reference.

Vincentz Network's digital ecosystem amplifies the magazine: the publishing house's care portals, newsletters, online training through the academy, and digital event formats structure the profession's information life beyond print. The monthly distance-training modules bridge print and digital, letting readers convert magazine content into certified qualifications. On social media, the magazine maintains channels for news distribution and professional community engagement. After nearly fifty years, Altenpflege operates as the nursing profession's cross-media information system in elderly care: monthly in print for the in-depth professional reading, daily online for the news flow, and continuously through the training modules, job market and education offers that accompany nurses through their careers — "ahead through knowledge," as the subtitle promises, in a profession where knowledge directly determines the quality of care.