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Enabling Nursing Students to Assist With COVID-19 Response
BY LOUIS PILLA
Dealing with a pandemic the likes of COVID-19 requires an “all hands on deck” approach. That includes those who are approaching or just at the threshold of their careers—nursing students.
Recently, ten prestigious nursing organizations endorsed a policy brief supporting practice/academic partnerships to assist the nursing workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic. That includes the National League for Nursing (NLN), National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), and the National Student Nurses’ Association, to name a few.
The brief encourages health care facilities and nursing education programs to partner during the COVID-19 crisis. It also indicates that prelicensure RN
students from diploma, associate degree, and baccalaureate degree nursing programs and PN/VN students from certificate nursing programs could augment and support nursing services in health care facilities. And it proposes that nursing students would be employed by the facility on a full- or parttime basis and would work in the role of a student nurse for compensation and, in conjunction with the student’s nursing education program, would receive academic credit toward meeting clinical requirements. The document was designed to address the need for students to gain clinical experience and the hospitals to get additional help during the COVID-19 crisis, says Maryann Alexander, PhD, RN, FAAN, Chief Officer, Nursing Regulation, NCSBN, who led the writing of the policy brief. “This model suggests that students are really prepared and able to do much more and can function in a supporting role to the nursing staff during the COVID crisis,” she says. “It’s an opportunity for students and it’s an opportunity for hospitals to have staff that you can trust and will have guidance from faculty.”
Along the same lines, a document from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) offers considerations for COVID-19 preparation and response in nursing schools. “For now, other than limiting direct care of COVID-19 patients, students in clinical settings may continue their roles as part of the care team,” it states. What’s more, it notes that “pandemic contingency staffing plans may include the potential use of nursing students should the outbreak accelerate to the point that our current national nursing workforce is unable to meet the demand for health care services.”
A March 2020 report in Health Affairs notes that in Georgia, nursing students who have completed coursework but not taken licensing exams are eligible for temporary RN licenses during the pandemic. Similarly, the Governor of Indiana issued an emergency executive order allowing recent nursing school graduates to apply for and receive a 90-day temporary license without having to take the NCLEX, according to Mary Carney, DNP, RN-BC, CNE, CCRN, State Director of Nursing for Western Governors University (WGU) Indiana. That license, she notes, can renew in 30-day increments for the duration of the declared emergency. at drive-through and facilitybased COVID-19 screenings. With WGU’s preceptorship model, “I have every confidence in my graduates going out there,” Carney says.
Collaboration is Key
Employing the skills of nursing students in a clinical setting needs to be a joint problemsolving process, says Beverly
A telling tale comes from Carney’s experience with the local VA hospital, which is one of the clinical sites used by WGU. The Richard L.
Employing the skills of nursing students in a clinical setting needs to be a joint problem-solving process, says Beverly Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN, CEO of NLN.
Roudebush Indianapolis VA Medical Center asked if WGU had any senior-level nursing students who were interested in immediate hire into a student nurse role. Other WGU clinical sites have used nursing students Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN, CEO of NLN. “There has to be some level of framing it within the community that the students are in. And that requires collaboration by the university, the school of nursing, and the hospitals that are involved,” she says. Students also need to be involved in the process, she says.
Even before the COVID19 pandemic, says Malone, many were interested in nursing. Now, “I think there’ll be even more people who want to become nurses.”
Louis Pilla is a seasoned publishing expert with over 20 years of experience in providing content and digital products to health care audiences.
