Health professional student’s volunteering activities during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic literature review

Abstract

BackgroundThe Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis has forced health and education services to use additional human resources, such as health professional students. Students in the health professions, particularly those in the medical field, can participate in a variety of voluntary activities, both directly and indirectly in health services. The aim of this review was to determine the affecting factors, types of activity, and benefits of undertaking a volunteering role by the health professional student.MethodsA systematic review of health professional student volunteering during the COVID-19 pandemic was conducted using seven databases: Epistemonikos, ProQuest, Scopus, EBSCOhost, JSTOR, Cochrane Library, and PubMed. This literature search included published articles from March 2020 through to December 2021 using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines.ResultWe included 41 studies that met the selection criteria that assessed the factors and specific programs related to health profession students’ volunteering involvement during the COVID-19 pandemic era. The most frequently observed supporting factor of the eagerness to be a volunteer was the feeling of moral responsibility (such as social dedication, sense of duty, and care), potential learning opportunities, personal interest, and financial compensation. Factors that contributed to a person’s refusal to participate in a volunteer position were the fear of COVID-19 itself (such as transmission, risk of being infected, and personal identification as a risk group).ConclusionThe review of available literature has shown that understanding the motivation and barriers to the willingness of health professional students to volunteer and the impact of volunteering activities on their future lives is a key for supporting them.

Investigating predictors of medical students' intentions to engagement in volunteering during the health crisis

“…In the study conducted by Zhu et al (2022), the COVID-19 risk perception was indicated as a moderating factor between volunteer behavior and empathy. Previous researches on volunteering have demonstrated that perceived risk of COVID-19 or fear of COVID-19 was negatively associated with intention or willingness to volunteer (Al Gharash et al, 2021;Tran et al, 2022;Umar et al, 2022). In fact, during the COVID-19 crisis, the exposure risk to the infection is higher among volunteer medical students due to their lack of clinical experience (Adejimi et al, 2021).…”

“…In Vietnam, Tran et al (2022) found that the health status, self-awareness, the prevalence of chronic diseases and fear level of COVID-19 were related to healthcare students' intention to volunteer. According to Umar et al (2022), the factors that lead someone to refuse to take a volunteer position are the fear of the risk of infection and the identification of his personal identity as a risky person. As best as we know, predictors of volunteer behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic have not been fully explored, including perceived risk of COVID-19.…”

“…It has also engendered uncertainties and inevitably permeated every aspect of peoples' professional and personal lives (Yorulmaz and Sevinc, 2021), including health employees and medical students. As the COVID-19 pandemic has propagated internationally, an increased need for volunteers has been felt (Mak and Fancourt, 2022;Siqueira et al, 2022), such as health students (Umar et al, 2022). Volunteering in the time of COVID-19 is different from volunteering in other catastrophes; because the COVID-19 pandemic is an unfamiliar, universal and complicated crisis, which brought about significant adversity to the emergency management (Lai and Wang, 2022) in both developed and developing countries.…”

“…As the COVID-19 pandemic has propagated internationally, an increased need for volunteers has been felt (Mak and Fancourt, 2022; Siqueira et al. , 2022), such as health students (Umar et al. , 2022).…”

“…However, many recent studies have confirmed that risk perceived from COVID-19 can decrease intentions to volunteer (e.g. Lazarus et al, 2021;Tran et al, 2022;Umar et al, 2022); as best as we know, no study has incorporated the perceived risk of COVID-19 into a TPB to explore volunteer intentions. Therefore, our study extends the TPB by including two additional constructs, namely personal moral norm and perceived risk of COVID-19.…”