PRINCETON, WV (WOAY) – Since the pandemic has worsened over the past month, students have switched to online courses to limit in-person interactions at schools.
For students in technical education programs like engineers, welders and even nurses, the transition may severely diminish the value of their education. One nursing student at the Mercer County Technical Education Center expressed her concerns to us.
“Well I think it’s affecting my education negatively because I’m not getting the education I need to be getting to learn how to take care of people properly. It’s just not the same as being in a classroom and having hands on with real people,” she said.
Some nursing assignments like clinicals are difficult to perform remotely. Typically, a nursing student would work with a real patient in a hospital setting, but with the pandemic going on and hospitals limiting who’s allowed inside, that’s not possible anymore.
“We are actually unable to even go to the hospital, and that is actually all of the hospitals in West Virginia. We are not allowed to go to the hospital and do real clinicals, so we are not able to work with real patients, we have to do it virtually online.”
Nursing clinicals are just one type of assignment made more difficult. In general, nursing and other healthcare-related programs are extremely difficult to be done in an online format.
Healthcare workers need to go through years of in-person schooling in order to be effectively qualified. This quick transition to a lack of in-person training is proving stressful for some.
“Some of my friends have been frantically calling me non-stop because they are so stressed out and I just have to keep telling them it’s okay, you’ll be fine, we’ll get through this.”
Some colleges and universities still offer some healthcare assignments like clinicals in-person, but they are few and far between. And even those programs may be shifted online if the pandemic worsens. For now, students will have to deal with this online shift.
