A Cross-Sectional International Study of Nursing Education During The Pandemic

About the Study

COVID-19, a virus that causes severe pneumonia, spread quickly over the world after first appearing in Wuhan, China. COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in late 2019 after estimates that the total number of human infections had reached 118,000 in 114 countries and 4291 persons had died as of March 11, 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a worldwide impact on people from all walks of life, resulting in changes in many fields, including education. Closing schools and suspending schooling were the initial education-related steps adopted around the world, but this response quickly proved untenable as the scope of the COVID-19 epidemic became clear. As a result, some schools attempted to utilise distance learning alternatives, while others chose to postpone the spring semester of the 2019-2020 academic year to the next year.

Nurses play a vital role in providing health education in both acute and community settings around the world to promote positive health outcomes and the overall efficacy of health care delivery. Hospital nurses, in particular, play an important role in everyday health education since they are in close contact with patients and are the most accessible health professionals in this context. Importantly, hospitalisation gives a "window of opportunity" to advocate for lifestyle changes due to the numerous instructional moments available in this setting. Furthermore, studies have indicated that while hospitalisation, the majority of patients are thinking or already wish to change at least one area of their lifestyle. Although there has been no comprehensive study of how the world's leading universities in nursing education and practise are managing this process, and what kind of difficulties nursing educators have encountered during this period, the literature contains numerous reviews, commentaries, and short communications conveying the experiences of nursing schools and nursing education during the pandemic. However, hospital nurses may lack confidence in their ability to provide effective health education, and they have been reported to have difficulties implementing health education interventions on a daily basis. Furthermore, one of the three most underappreciated parts of nursing care is patient education. Nurses delivering health education interventions are given minimal value, especially in hospitals, where high workloads, a physician-oriented environment, short patient stays, and a lack of clear guidelines for gaining competency in health education practise are common. Furthermore, because these aspects are core needs for effective health education practise, a nurse's lack of skills, knowledge, desire, and self-confidence may negatively impact the quality of education offered by the nurse. The non-random sampling technique used in this investigation reduced the results. Purposive sampling, to some extent, limits the sample's representativeness, reducing the generalizability of the findings. Despite this, public and private hospitals, as well as other departments, were included in the study, and the sample size was substantial. Furthermore, the sample was mostly made up of female nurses, therefore results from different sex groups should be interpreted with caution. Furthermore, despite the fact that the I-CEpSE scores can be interpreted using the complete theoretical ranges, cut-off point scores for indexing competency are not accessible, which is a factor to consider when evaluating nurses' competence.