Student nurses, nursing curriculums and emergency responses to Covid-19: A scoping review

BACKGROUND: Emergency healthcare responses to COVID-19 substantially impacted on nursing curriculums and student nurses worldwide. Understanding the extent of this impact on their learning experiences could inform nursing curriculums going forward. OBJECTIVE: Identify the range and nature of literature related to emergency healthcare response to COVID-19 and its impact on student nurses and nursing curriculums. Explore and analyze the findings within the searched literature. Position findings within the broader context of the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on nursing curriculums. Identify gaps in the literature. DESIGN: Using the Johanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology, we conducted a scoping review of literature published in the English language from 2019 to 2021. Search strategy included specific search terms used to search five online databases: CINAHL, ProQuest, and PubMed and OVID, and Google Scholar. A narrative approach was used to synthesize the identified papers. RESULTS: 356 papers were retrieved through initial database and hand searches; 260 once duplicates were removed. Close assessment by title, abstract, and full paper using inclusion/exclusion criteria narrowed this to 16 relevant articles. CONCLUSIONS: This review did not assess for quality, however selected studies were themselves emergency responses to COVID-19, conducted in haste, so reviewers deemed the quality of evidence to be impacted by this. They suggest healthcare responses to COVID-19 have been highly disruptive for many student nurses. Studies focused almost entirely on face-to-face traditional nurse learners, with distance learners only mentioned in passing in two papers.