Research: The impact of COVID-19 on nursing education

Research summary

• July 2020 – present

The project offers insights into how the pandemic has affected learning and employment opportunities for student nurses.

The study – Learning to care in unprecedented times: the impact of COVID-19 on nursing education – has identified the support that both current and future nursing students may need.

It also highlights how the pandemic has made long-standing issues more urgent, such as the workforce shortages, nurses’ working conditions and concerns over their professional status.

The project offers insights into students’ experiences. It draws on wider concerns for the sociology of education, including social mobility and widening participation policy.

Through qualitative interviews with final-year students, newly-qualified nurses and professional stakeholders, the project explored:

• the experiences of final year nursing students during the COVID-19 pandemic
• their short-term graduate outcomes and longer-term goals
• the role of class, gender and ‘race’ in shaping the nursing students’ educational trajectories
• the support recently graduated nurses require, and any lessons for nursing education

The project also sought input from stakeholders, including nursing lecturers and staff from a local NHS Trust, on the impact of the pandemic on nursing education.

Among the issues investigated were:

• social differences and inequalities among student nurses, including the over-representation of women, disabled people, people from Black and Ethnic Minority (BAME) groups, those from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and people with family responsibilities
• the fact that BAME healthcare workers were more likely to die from COVID-19
• the impact of degrees and graduate entry on the core caring role of the nursing profession