Impact of COVID - 19 pandemic on nursing students’ attitude and practice during clinical training

Nursing students are the future health care providers; according to their quality of training and teaching, this can positively affect their knowledge, attitude, and practice. The challenges faced by student nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic caused them to have a negative impact on their attitude and practice during clinical training and can affect patient care.
Objective: To assess the impact of the COVID - 19 pandemic on nursing students’ attitude and practice during clinical training.
Design: The study was a quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional study.
Setting(s): The study was done in selected Nursing Colleges of the Northern Emirates of United Arab Emirates.
Participants: The participants were 345 Bachelor of Science in nursing students currently studying in the Nursing Colleges of Northern Emirates and attending clinical training in the hospitals.
Methods: The samples were all Bachelor of Science in nursing students who are attending clinical training. The sample size was a consecutive sample; the total number of students who participated was 198 students from a total population of 345. The data collection tool consists of two parts. The first part was about demographic information of the nursing students, and the second part was consists of two questionnaires on the attitude and practice of nursing students towards patient care during the COVID- 19 pandemic.
Results: The study finding indicated that the majority of nursing students were age group between 21 to 25 years old (58.3%), females (93.4%), 4th year of nursing study (35.4%), working in medical ward (25.8%) and living with their parents (75.8%). Whereas about 74.9% of the students were not suffering from any health risk condition, but their families were suffering from health risk conditions, especially hypertension (40.2%). The majority of the students were tested between 11 to 19 times (47%), negative test results (94%), not isolated (58.6%) with family negative test results (55.1%). The total score category of nursing student's attitude and practice toward patient care were showed that nursing students were having average attitudes (73.7%) and average practice (70.2%) toward patient care.
Conclusions: The study's finding showed that nursing students' attitude and practice were average during clinical training toward patient care during the COVID – 19 pandemics and recommended developing a training program to cultivate nursing students' skills in managing disasters.