The Current Status of Nursing Management Practicum during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Purpose: This study was to identify how a nursing management practicum was operated during the COVID-19 pandemic in Korea. Methods: This study surveyed instructors teaching the nursing management practicum with a questionnaire covering five domains and 42 items. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and content analysis. Results: The practicum was performed mainly by mixed methods (40.8% and 38.5%), in hospitals only (30.8% and 60.4%), online only (19.8% and 1.1%) in 2020 and 2021, respectively. The mixed methods were most frequently used for instructor teaching and conferences (43.9% and 58.3%). and the average teaching time per week was 9.40 and 8.69 hours per week, respectively. Taking charge in one to three core nursing skill items, 87.8% and 90.1% of the respondents each year performed face to face evaluation for the skills. Four to six out of 12 POs were covered by 58.2% and 54.9% of the participants, respectively, in 2020 and 2021. The greatest difficulty under the pandemic was securing students' hospital assignments. Conclusion: The nursing management practicum needs to adopt various digital technologies, and create new education models including hybrid ones combining both contact and untact methods to improve the educational effect for the post COVID-19 era.