Student nurses, nursing curriculums and emergency responses to Covid-19: A scoping review.

BACKGROUND

Emergency healthcare responses to COVID-19 substantially impacted on nursing curriculums and student nurses worldwide. Understanding the extent of this impact on their learning experiences could inform nursing curriculums going forward.

OBJECTIVE

Identify the range and nature of literature related to emergency healthcare response to COVID-19 and its impact on student nurses and nursing curriculums. Explore and analyze the findings within the searched literature. Position findings within the broader context of the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on nursing curriculums. Identify gaps in the literature.

DESIGN

Using the Johanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology, we conducted a scoping review of literature published in the English language from 2019 to 2021. Search strategy included specific search terms used to search five online databases: CINAHL, ProQuest, and PubMed and OVID, and Google Scholar. A narrative approach was used to synthesize the identified papers.

RESULTS

356 papers were retrieved through initial database and hand searches; 260 once duplicates were removed. Close assessment by title, abstract, and full paper using inclusion/exclusion criteria narrowed this to 16 relevant articles.

CONCLUSIONS

This review did not assess for quality, however selected studies were themselves emergency responses to COVID-19, conducted in haste, so reviewers deemed the quality of evidence to be impacted by this. They suggest healthcare responses to COVID-19 have been highly disruptive for many student nurses. Studies focused almost entirely on face-to-face traditional nurse learners, with distance learners only mentioned in passing in two papers.