COVID-19: Impact on undergraduate nursing education in Sri Lanka.

Abstract

“Novel Corona Virus” (COVID-19) is a new infectious disease spreading all around the world that has a globally significant morbidity and mortality at present. Nurses as frontline care providers in hospitals and community are exposed to a major risk. This brief report aims at providing an overview of COVID-19 impacts on Sri Lanka and to highlight educational implications from the perspective of nursing degree programs. The major impacts of COVID-19 on nursing education were unequal access to online distance learning, disruption of academic calendars, cancellation of clinical placements, teaching and learning gap, lack of facilities for online learning, disruption towards professional development, and inability to conduct proper clinical assessments and standard operationalization procedures. It suggests that higher education institutions should take actions to provide material support for students from low-income households to close the gap between teaching and learning and training academics on different online teaching and learning strategies and assessments.Significance for public healthThis article emphasizes the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on nursing education where the clinical training is a major component in nursing curricula. It prompts nursing academics to think advance on future educational needs of the world and how to adapt with the pandemic situations. It is an advantage for higher education institutions to facilitate nursing faculties to utilize new technologies and revise nursing curricular to use blended learning activities which would be the best approaches in future nursing education.