The Nursing Students’ Perspectives and Experiences on Modified Clinical Experience during the Corona Virus Disease (Covid-19) Pandemic in Kenya (Review Paper).

Background: The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic indiscriminately affected every part of the world. As a pandemic, it posed a serious threat to global health and society, and brought an impact to both the education system and healthcare services. The Public health measures that were instituted to control the spread of the Coronavirus in Kenya consisted of implementing lockdowns/quarantine and social distancing. Nurse educators were compelled to be creative, flexible, quick, and agile in the integration of theory with practice for skills teaching and learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. One such radical change in approach to the overwhelming challenge of sustaining nursing education was changing the method of teaching/learning delivery. Other settings had no choice but to adjust (compress, lengthen, or shorten) the time frame of clinical placements. Owing to the methods enacted to manage the pandemic, the clinical setting also became confined for the students, faculty, and general public. Objective: This review paper sought from literature study the perceptions and experiences of nursing students regarding these adapted clinical experiences. Findings: The participants expressed that they have mixed perceptions and experiences of the adapted clinical experiences. Students reported feeling diverse emotions, including but not limited to, confusion, anxiety, frustration, positivity, and excitement. They, the nursing students, acquired new competencies during the pandemic such as core subject competencies, coordination of service/human resource, standard precautions, soft skills in nursing, crisis preparedness and management. The students expeditiously adapted to the new normal environment because of strong coping mechanisms and support systems. The nurses also noted and were grateful for the limited support from hospital leadership and faculty staff. Their concern was that heavy PPEs and restrictive regime made patient communication difficult. The never-ending evolving processes and procedures were quite bewildering. Conclusion: The change during the Covid-19 pandemic in clinical experience in context of how it was delivered, length, and setting was out of the box, yet fantastic. The study concludes that there is a modification of clinical experiences amid heightened excitement and satisfaction along with strong adaptation or coping. Having said that, this study highlights the shortcomings of modified clinicals including uncertainty, anxiety, fear of the unknown, a mix of sadness and anger, undue fatigue, unclear communicating to the patient through the process of care and very little supporting systems. Recommendations: It is recommended that this study incorporates blended clinical techniques alongside other emerging strategies into the teaching modules for undergraduate nursing students. In addition, there should be strong support from hospital leadership/mentors and preceptors for better students’ experiences/outcomes towards patient outcome improvement, resource management, and staff safety.