The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of a pandemic as a forced disruption in nursing education to recover from and prepare for current and future disruptions. Four qualitative themes from Midwestern nursing professional development providers (n = 60) noted impacts. Recommendations for nursing professional development leaders to support staff during turbulent times include preparation for online teaching and learning, and improved communication regarding essential education.
Nursing education, both academe and professional staff development, changed markedly with the corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic requiring unprecedented revisions and omissions for learners (Hassmiller, 2020;Johnson et al., 2020;Zeinali et al., 2020). Parse (2020) described this pandemic as "an…earthquake…. In every walk of life, what was is shattered, and simultaneously there was shapeshifting of the familiar. Nothing will ever be the same. The comfort of the known has been replaced with the discomfort of the not knowing what to expect" (p. 197). Institutions rapidly transferred nursing professional development (NPD) practitioners to COVID-19-related initiatives. In addition, fiscal concerns of one healthcare organization placed staff, including NPD providers, on furlough because of lost revenue from governmentmandated stay-at-home orders and cancellation of procedures and nonemergent care. Rapid changes in practice and a shortage of personal protective equipment resulted in canceling student clinical learning, pausing hiring of new staff, closing units, and halting physical interactions. COVID-19 took NPD practitioners off-guard by sudden changes in their job requirements, often moving from orienting new staff to working on COVID-19 initiatives such as personal protective equipment training, preparing staff to triage potential COVID-19 cases over the phone, and training for possible redeployment of staff to inpatient areas.
BACKGROUNDLeaders at one Midwestern medical system desired to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as a forced disruption in nursing education. The primary purpose of this article is to describe the impact of a pandemic as a forced disruption in nursing education for NPD providers through results of a mixed-method survey. Second, recommendations for future or continued disruption to education for students, new graduates, orientees, and especially nurse educators in a practice-based setting are discussed.