References
Coping after the COVID-19 pandemic: nurses' learning intent and implications for the workforce and education
Abstract
Background/aim:
Addressing the critical global shortage of nurses requires an understanding of how a global pandemic reshaped nurses' motivations and intentions toward education. This study aimed to describe COVID-19's impact on nurses' intent to pursue additional education.
Method:
This descriptive study, based in North Carolina in the USA, used content analysis with an inductive approach to examine the responses of nurses to one open-ended question in a large quantitative workforce survey: how has COVID-19 influenced your plans for future education? Responses were coded with counts and organised into themes and subthemes.
Findings:
Primary themes identified from the data included: stressors, appraisals and coping. There were 10 subthemes, which supported primary themes with direct quotes from nurses. The implications of the themes aligns with concepts from the self-determination theory: autonomy, competence and relatedness.
Conclusion:
Nurse responses to the pandemic can guide organisations and academic institutions in supporting nurses in times of stress and design programmes that align with their goals. Nursing leaders and educators must support nurses' autonomy, competence and relatedness, addressing issues such as burnout, financial strain, work–life balance and evolving professional demands. Academic institutions should adopt flexible, resilience-focused curricula and invest in skilled nurse educators to support the growing need for advanced education and online learning.
It is critical that leaders address the problem of worldwide registered nurse shortages in the healthcare workplace, which were exacerbated by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Nursing education serves as a resource and pipeline to address these shortages. To increase the number of nurse educators, more advanced training for nurses is essential. The pandemic has created workforce challenges in health care, additional stress and an increased shortage of nurses. Less is known about the impact of COVID-19 in the context of healthcare on nurses' intent to pursue additional education. Specifically, the authors aimed to describe and interpret this impact.
Nursing shortages in clinical and academic settings are not new and it is generally accepted that the pandemic has exacerbated this. In the USA, Auerbach et al (2022) reported a 1-year (2020-2021) loss of 100 000 nurses from the workforce, the largest exit in any year over the past 40 years. In addition, many of these nurses who left the workforce were aged under 35 years and employed in hospitals. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, analysts had already projected major nursing shortages across the USA (Juraschek et al, 2019). Much of the projected nurse shortage nationally at that time was attributed to a significant portion of the nursing workforce reaching retirement age (American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), 2020).
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