Perception Of Nursing Teachers Regarding the Effect of Covid-19 On Clinical Training at Government Nursing College - Khartoum State –Sudan (2022)

This paper aims to reveal the emergent risks, anxiety, and disruptions of clinical training experienced by nursing educators and students enrolled in the Khartoum government nursing colleges during the COVID-19 pandemic (Al Mahdi). Consequently, the research results shed light on various ways COVID-19 affected nursing education and enlighten the aspects that need to be addressed or enhanced.

Regarding age, 33.3% of the nursing educators in the study fell under 32–37 years, while 33.3% were more than 40 years of age (Mwikali et al., 2023). These age groups are considered to be at a higher risk of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality because infection with the virus tends to be more severe in older adults. This aligns with global information, which shows the rate at which the pandemic affects individuals of certain ages, especially older adults, and not forgetting the most important educators. Therefore, there is a need to employ more significant protective measures when implementing this new system (Bank, 2020). This increases the susceptibility of this group, which becomes an essential factor when designing strategies to protect the faculty's health during pandemics.

The academic qualification of the educators revealed that 59.3% possessed a master's degree in nursing, while 37% possessed a PhD (Hickey et al., 2018). These figures show that academic professionals in the teaching staff are at a high level and essential for curriculum implementation and change during emergencies. Further, 33.3% of the educators have 7–10 years of teaching experience, and an equal proportion of those with over 10 teaching years also show their readiness to respond to Education during the pandemic. However, this expertise would have made these faculty members attentive to the risks of COVID-19 in clinical places, which may have made them develop anxiety and stress (Shanafelt et al., 2020).

The study also highlighted that 56.5% of the educators observed nursing students get infected with COVID-19 during the interphase of clinical training, out of which 62.9% of the educators claimed nursing students were infected while training in clinical facilities (Dhindayal et al., 2022). This paper directly captures the challenges of clinical training in a pandemic learning environment since students have to engage with the patients as part of their practice, and they are bound to come across patients who may be favorable for COVID-19 (Hayat et al., 2021). Such infections also have other effects because they contribute to anxiety among the students, their teachers, and the educators. The possibility of passing the virus to family members and other loved ones also reinforces this anxiety, making teaching and even learning very difficult for both teachers and learners (Bozkurt et al., 2020). The effect of this anxiety can be primarily psychological and play a role in the process of teaching and learning, as well as impact the mental health of all learners and teachers.

The dangers to the educators were also apparent, as 18.5% of tutors mentioned that they contracted COVID-19 while undertaking clinical practice. This statistic highlights the direct threat to hospital educators, especially during a pandemic. Infection among educators is detrimental to their health and impacts the delivery of Education because of the many cases of teacher absenteeism (Mohammed et al., 2020). This poses a problem with the continuity of Education and, at large, affects the quality of training offered to students. This disruption is unfavorable in nursing education since clinical training is the significant component of their training, not theoretical lessons.

Another issue noted in the study was the challenging Burden on educators, especially with 40% being forced to work as COVID-19 caretakers during the pandemic. Infection controls during the pandemic were scarce during the study period, and even the essential workers barely had enough personal protective equipment (PPEs) (Morris & Murray, 2021). The lack of PPE exposure added to the challenges experienced by educators and students as basic precautionary measures like wearing face masks were ineffective in high-risk areas of hospitals. This shows the need and calls for better consideration and planning to protect front-line educators and learners in future epidemics.

According to the study findings, COVID-19 reduced teaching performance by impacting how educators teach; hence, it had a negative influence. The mean response scores of 1.7, 2.5, and 2.44 proved that educators agreed that the pandemic had an adverse effect on teaching performance. This result supports other studies in countries like Ethiopia, where Anguso et al. (2021) revealed that 59.9% of nursing educators believed COVID-19 negatively affected clinical learning (Angasu et al., 2021). Educators have faced many problems, such as disruption of clinical practice, working overload, and increased stress; these factors will undoubtedly impact teaching performance deterioration.

COVID-19 was also evaluated regarding its effects on student performance, and the results were negative (Gonzalez et al., 2020). It is worth pointing out that all mean response scores are >1.5, where educators agreed that the pandemic negatively impacted students' Clinical Education. Clinical practice is the most essential requirement of nursing education because it helps students learn practical lessons expected of them (Ferri et al., 2023). However, the pandemic upset this crucial learning segment; numerous students could not accomplish the training or attain the goal set by their clinical courses. This disruption is not only in current performance but also in future readiness to practice as professionals in the field.

The challenges in clinical training were further amplified by the realization that the duration of the clinical training courses was inadequate during the pandemic. The respondents stated that the goals of clinical training courses are unfulfilled, insinuating that students fail to learn and equally acquire clinical skills (Gordon et al., 2020). These findings emphasize the importance of better ideas to maintain and enhance clinical Education during crises. This led to some recommendations, such as using other models in clinical training, as highlighted in the study. Professors fully supported strategies like training students in skills laboratories and providing them with lab simulations, shortening the hospital practice term, delaying clinical practice, or even halting it altogether (Noll, 2021). Although these options cannot completely replace the hospital's practical training, they are essential tools that help reduce the effects of disruptions occasioned by pandemics.

Lastly, the study established a positive correlation between the number of years of educators' teaching practice and their perceptions of getting infected during clinical training with a p-value of 0.001 (Motte-Signoret et al., 2021). This finding reveals that COVID-19 affected the mental health of seasoned teachers who may have been most conscious of the dangers. This fear governed the teaching methodology and relations with students, thus adding to the trouble in the educational procedure.