TITLE:
COVID-19 Impact on RN Nursing Students’ Personal & Professional Lives: A Qualitative Study
AUTHORS:
Denise Smart, Sara Welty, Gail Oneal
KEYWORDS:
COVID-19, Thematic Analysis, RN Nursing Students, Pandemic, Nurse Retention
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.13 No.2,
February
14,
2022
ABSTRACT: This paper explores the experiences early in the pandemic as RN students added the challenge of pursuing a higher degree with the additional burden of entering into the uncharted territory of a pandemic. Reflexive thematic analysis with an inductive semantic approach was used to analyze 44 RN students’ written assignment texts that asked the question: What has been the impact ofCOVID-9 on your personal and professional lives? Four major themes evolvedfrom the analysis of these reflective papers that explained the trajectory of “being in limbo”: Naiveté, Surprise, Challenges Everywhere, and Consequences. These themes revealed what it was like for the RN student participants during the earlier days of the COVID pandemic as found within the context of a disaster preparedness nursing course. Nurse educators have a significant role and obligation to recognize stressors or distress in their students when disasters, significant events or pandemics are in play. Developingintentional curricula strategies for personal and professional resilience throughcompassionate and supportive learning environments and evidence-based self-care programs is crucial to student retention and early novice career retention.