Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted virtually all aspects of life globally. Within the context of professional nursing education, which sits squarely at the intersection of post-secondary education and healthcare, the effects were unparalleled in our 150-year history. Given the intense demand to continue to graduate nurses who would be able to staff healthcare settings in crisis, there was no opportunity to consider any type of pause in program offerings. At the same time, the need to pivot rapidly to alternative means by which theoretical and practicum-based nursing program requirements could be met was upon us with no more than a few weeks’ notice, and at times less than that. All the while, nursing faculty carried the burden of knowing that every decision they made needed to be based on evidence (where available), sound judgment, and deep reservoirs of nursing knowledge and teaching-learning expertise. As the dust settles following the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty from four post-secondary nursing programs in Ontario, Canada, joined together to consider their experiences and what lessons can be learned. Rather than create a laundry list of “what to do next time…”, these educators pondered not just the COVID-19 context, but the conditions that existed both in the field of nursing and post-secondary nursing education prior to the pandemic. What emerged from this philosophical contemplation was an opportunity to consider the very framing of nursing education in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Contrasting the conceptions of a firestorm (out of control, chaotic, threatening, unpredictable) versus a rapid but controlled burn (whether occurring naturally or by intention a series of actions designed to remove dead wood and undergrowth to create conditions that both mitigate the risk for destruction and create fertile conditions for future growth), faculty identified within their own professional experiences what they viewed as antecedents, attributes, and consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on nursing education. Through this process, faculty revisited on a deeper level the ethical demand that post-secondary education remains consistently vigilant, nimble, responsive, and resilient.

Keywords:

Post-secondary education, nursing, covid-19.