COVID-19 pandemic effects on nursing education: looking through the lens of a developing country

Abstract

Background: COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the way things are done in walks of life including nursing education in both developing and developed countries. Nursing schools all over the world as well as in developing countries responded to the pandemic following the guidelines of the World Health Organisation and different countries specific guidelines regarding the pandemic.

Aim: This reflective piece aims to describe the effect of COVID-19 on nursing education in developing countries.

Result: Face-to-face teaching and learning were converted to virtual remote learning and clinical experiences suspended to protect the students from the pandemic. Specific but broader responses to the pandemic in the Caribbean and other developing countries have been shaped by financial, political and other contextual factors, especially the level of information technology infrastructure development, and the attendant inequities in access to such technology between the rural and urban areas. Internet accessibility, affordability and reliability in certain areas seem to negatively affect the delivery of nursing education during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Conclusion and implications for nursing and/or health policy: The impact of COVID-19 on nursing education in the Caribbean and other parts of the world has shown that if adequate measures are put in place by the way of disaster preparedness and preplanned mitigation strategies, future crises like COVID-19 will have less impact on nursing education. Therefore, health policymakers and nursing regulatory bodies in the developing countries should put policies in place that will help in responding, coping and recovering quickly from future occurrences.

Keywords: COVID-19; Jamaica; developing country; effect; nursing education.

Fig 1

(1) Cycle of Recovery: Way forward. Adapted from Managing the impact of COVID‐19 on education systems around the world: How countries are preparing, coping, and planning for recovery by K. Azzi‐Huck, & T. Shmis, Copyright (2000), World Bank Group. (2) COVID‐19 pandemic—Humanity needs leadership and solidarity to defeat the coronavirus by UNDP (2020).