Evolving Approaches to Meet Clinical Hours for Undergraduate Nursing Students during COVID-19

Kimberly Rumsey, Shinu Joy () and John Michael Leger
Additional contact information
Kimberly Rumsey: School of Nursing, University of Texas Medical Branch, 301 University Blvd., Galveston, TX 77555-1132, USA
Shinu Joy: School of Nursing, University of Texas Medical Branch, 301 University Blvd., Galveston, TX 77555-1132, USA
John Michael Leger: School of Nursing, University of Texas Medical Branch, 301 University Blvd., Galveston, TX 77555-1132, USA

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 11, 1-9

Abstract: Background: The COVID-19 pandemic challenged all healthcare professionals to re-think how patient care is provided. Faculty in nursing schools faced similar challenges in offering adequate clinical hours to nursing students, because of the limited availability of clinical placements. Methods: A faculty in one school of nursing introduced virtual simulation resources to supplement in-person clinical hours. The faculty developed a revised clinical curriculum for students that included weekly objectives and deliverables for virtual simulations. The Simulation Effectiveness Tool-Modified (SET-M) was utilized to evaluate the effectiveness of the virtual simulations. Results: 130 students (88.4%) completed the post-implementation survey. After using the virtual simulations, 50% of the students reported feeling confident in providing interventions that foster patient safety. Furthermore, students reported a sound understanding of disease pathophysiology (60%) and medications (53.8%). The qualitative data indicated that students found the virtual simulations beneficial and a safe learning environment. Conclusion: Pre-pandemic virtual simulations were not used by this school of nursing to replace the traditional in-person clinical experiences. However, the pandemic demonstrated that the utilization of innovative virtual simulations are effective methods for student learning to augment traditional clinical experiences.

Keywords: COVID-19; clinical hours; nursing education; simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/11/5974/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/11/5974/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:20:y:2023:i:11:p:5974-:d:1157564

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().