Maintaining Ethics in Nursing Education During COVID-19
COVID-19 forced on ground nursing programs to change into an online format overnight since mid March in the United States. This transition has been challenging to say the least. It has been an adjustment for the nursing faculty who had to scramble to make sure they are still effectively teaching the students, and meeting instructional hours. Decisions had to be made between how to deliver content - synchronously or asynchronously. Without a formal online teaching background, for most faculty, navigating this decision and developing alternate learning assignments was challenging. To complicate this process further is that nursing schools are accountable to their respective State Boards of Nursing. Plans for the semester had to be altered, put in writing to academic leadership, and then submitted to the respective State Boards of Nursing for approval. Those plans were short term, but now as the stay at home orders persist, for those of us in year round programs tentative plans are being made for an uncertain summer semester.
Another challenge has been how to accomplish clinical during this time. Every State Board of Nursing has different guidelines about using sim in clinical education, often without a hard number of published hours that may be replaced. During this time, we have no choice but to carry out clinical with simulation. So the problem has been - "How do you make the clinical simulations meaningful for students?" How do we ensure adequate learning is occurring, learning which contributes to critical thinking and clincial judgement for future application in a nursing career? How do we handle accelerated nursing students who are entering another semester without hospital rotations approved due to the ongoing problems being experienced in hospitals. Accelerated programs typically last four semesters in length. What do we do if we cannot go into hospitals again this entire summer, or even into the fall? How should we handle clinical? If all done by sim is it realistic that these students have had very limited or no contact with patients. What does this mean for their future practice? Some educators feel as if, in sim, we at least address scenarios that may not be available to us in real life, i.e not occur while we are in the hospital for the day. This is true but can sim replace real patient/nursing student interaction?
Can we apply my Siciliano-McLaughlin Model of Ethics here? Should we still strive for advocacy, dignity, humanity, integrity, leadership, and authenticity when in this crisis mode? Should we, as educators, compromise our own values and personal philosophy of nursing? I would hope not. I think we can still uphold the tenets of this model and show its application to students during this time. I will address this alone in a future post soon.
How can we approach this as a teachable moment for our students? As nurses, we know we need to be adaptable at all times. Having to deal with these changes provides us with a teachable moment for our students. We can focus on adaptability and accountability while maintaining our educational standards.
I invite others to chime in here. I look forward to some good conversation around educating our nursing students during this time of a pandemic. Stay safe and healthy everyone.
Another challenge has been how to accomplish clinical during this time. Every State Board of Nursing has different guidelines about using sim in clinical education, often without a hard number of published hours that may be replaced. During this time, we have no choice but to carry out clinical with simulation. So the problem has been - "How do you make the clinical simulations meaningful for students?" How do we ensure adequate learning is occurring, learning which contributes to critical thinking and clincial judgement for future application in a nursing career? How do we handle accelerated nursing students who are entering another semester without hospital rotations approved due to the ongoing problems being experienced in hospitals. Accelerated programs typically last four semesters in length. What do we do if we cannot go into hospitals again this entire summer, or even into the fall? How should we handle clinical? If all done by sim is it realistic that these students have had very limited or no contact with patients. What does this mean for their future practice? Some educators feel as if, in sim, we at least address scenarios that may not be available to us in real life, i.e not occur while we are in the hospital for the day. This is true but can sim replace real patient/nursing student interaction?
Can we apply my Siciliano-McLaughlin Model of Ethics here? Should we still strive for advocacy, dignity, humanity, integrity, leadership, and authenticity when in this crisis mode? Should we, as educators, compromise our own values and personal philosophy of nursing? I would hope not. I think we can still uphold the tenets of this model and show its application to students during this time. I will address this alone in a future post soon.
How can we approach this as a teachable moment for our students? As nurses, we know we need to be adaptable at all times. Having to deal with these changes provides us with a teachable moment for our students. We can focus on adaptability and accountability while maintaining our educational standards.
I invite others to chime in here. I look forward to some good conversation around educating our nursing students during this time of a pandemic. Stay safe and healthy everyone.
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