The impact of COVID-19 lockdown on nursing higher education at Chengdu University.

Publisher: Public Library of Science Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 101285081 Publication Model: eCollection Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1932-6203 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 19326203 NLM ISO Abbreviation: PLoS One Subsets: MEDLINE

Original Publication: San Francisco, CA : Public Library of Science

COVID-19*/epidemiology ; COVID-19*/prevention & control ; Education, Nursing*; Humans ; Female ; Pandemics ; Universities ; Communicable Disease Control

Background: To combat/control the COVID-19 pandemic, a complete lockdown was implemented in China for almost 6 months during 2020.
Purpose: To determine the impact of a long-term lockdown on the academic performance of first-year nursing students via mandatory online learning, and to determine the benefits of online teaching.
Methods: The recruitment and academic performance of 1st-year nursing students were assessed between 2019 [prior to COVID-19, n = 195, (146 women)] and 2020 [during COVID-19, n = 180 (142 women)]. The independent sample t test or Mann-Whitney test was applied for a comparison between these two groups.
Results: There was no significant difference in student recruitment between 2019 and 2020. The overall performance of the first-year students improved in the Biochemistry, Immunopathology, Traditional Chinese Medicine Nursing and Combined Nursing courses via mandatory online teaching in 2020 compared with traditional teaching in 2019.
Conclusion: Suspension of in-class learning but continuing education virtually online has occurred without negatively impacting academic performance, thus academic goals are more than achievable in a complete lockdown situation. This study offers firm evidence to forge a path for developments in teaching methods to better incorporate virtual learning and technology in order to adapt to fast-changing environments. However, the psychological/psychiatric and physical impact of the COVID-19 lockdown and the lack of face-to-face interaction on these students remains to be explored.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: © 2023 Cai et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

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Date Created: 20230616 Date Completed: 20230619 Latest Revision: 20231118

20240628

PMC10275429

10.1371/journal.pone.0286290

37327232