TITLE:
Graduating Nurses in the Time of COVID-19
AUTHORS:
Andrea Barbosa
KEYWORDS:
COVID-19, Pandemic, Online Undergraduate Nursing Program, Online Simulation, Clinical Experience, Nurse Students’ Competence, Nurse Student, Nurse Residency
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Nursing,
Vol.13 No.10,
October
17,
2023
ABSTRACT: Nursing has been a leader in online education for more than two decades.
Nursing students have taken advantage of the flexible scheduling and variety of
online nursing programs to pursue their education due to distance, family, or
work demands; however, since the outbreak of COVID-19, nursing schools in the
United States have adapted by implementing an online alternative to assess
students’ clinical skills required to graduate. Nursing faculty have been
forced into this new learning culture, navigating the online landscape,
learning new technologies and teaching methods, and adapting to clinical social
distance education. Nursing is a performance-based profession in which the
clinical learning environment plays an important role in developing skills and
professional abilities. The purpose of this evidence-based teaching project is
to, based on National League for Nursing (NLN), not only contribute to
improvement but ensure educational quality for undergraduate nursing students by examining how online simulation compared to
clinical experience with an actual patient, affects nurses’ clinical
competence. Therefore, after reviewing 14 peer-reviewed articles, evidence
shows benefits for undergraduate nursing students to retain better
clinical competence when virtual simulation and clinical sites are combined;
however, further research is recommended. Articles were selected as the
evidence base for this project, following specific inclusion criteria.
Inclusion criteria for evidence were articles within six years, including
undergraduate nurse students with online clinical education; the exclusion
criteria were studies including graduate nurse students and articles older than
six years. Based on the project’s outcome, it is suggested that a nurse
residency should follow online simulations to complete clinical hours.