Nursing Students' Experiences and Challenges in Their Education During COVID 19 Pandemic: A Mixed-Method Study.

Introduction: The COVID-19 outbreak disrupted the nursing education across the world. The nursing students faced many challenges in their learning process.

Objective: The study explored the experiences and challenges faced by nursing students who had virtual education in India.

Methods: The study adopted an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design. The study was conducted as two phases. Phase 1: Qualitative data were collected using direct focus group interview with 18 students. Phase 2: Quantitative data were collected from 477 students using a Likert scale prepared by the investigators of the study on challenges experienced by nursing students on their education. The analysis was done using the descriptive and inferential statistics and thematic analysis.

Results: Phase 1: The analyzed data produced seven themes and 10 sub-themes; (1) technical issues-a concern, (2) regular rhythm in educational training-but not complete, (3) stress and strain, (4) evaluation-a concern, (5) communication, (6) comfort zone, and (7) easy distraction. Phase 2: Majority of the students (54.71%) experienced high-level challenges with the nursing education during pandemic. The overall mean and SD of all the domain-wise challenges were 103.39 + 7.11 with the range from 30 to 150. The mean and SD with educational challenges were (20.27 + 3.04), environmental challenges (6.92 + 1.66), communication challenges (17.61 + 4.01), technical challenges (17.39 + 3.75), evaluation challenges (7.09 + 1.94), physical and mental challenges (20.47 + 4.33), career challenges (7.06 + 1.91), and financial challenges (6.61 + 2.1). The demographic variable gender (P = 0.045) showed a statistically significant association with the challenges.

Conclusion: Considering the experiences and challenges faced by the nursing students, the nursing administrators shall design educational strategies to mitigate these challenges in nursing education during a pandemic.

Implication: Virtual nursing education offers flexibility in teaching and learning, self-paced learning opportunity, lower the costs, career advancement, comfortable learning environment, more opportunities for participation, easier to track documentation and improves skills in technology. Therefore, the challenges in virtual nursing education should be lessened to have successful teaching learning experiences.