The pandemic of COVID-19 has shifted conventional education to online and distance learning at all levels worldwide [8]. It has a massive impact on health care workers & learners and their practices from all specialties, especially respiratory therapy. Respiratory therapist’s main work area is Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where most of COVID-19 patients were admitted [1]. As a result, it became a challenge for RT students to attend their clinical rotation that is essential to understand their curriculum.
A study has revealed that COVID-19 pandemic had disrupted medical students’ education [14]. This study found that most of the students felt less confident and prepared for the next level because of the canceled practical sessions, and this was significantly associated with the academic year. Comparing third year students to their seniors, they were more likely to feel less confident and less prepared. Third year is the foundation year for practical sessions, so the association can be due to students’ concerns about their performance in the next academic years. Similarly, a previous study has showed that 59.32% of medical students felt less confident and prepared for next Foundation Doctor Year (FY1) due to COVID-19 disruption [15]. Importantly, in this study, statical analysis revealed that the percentage of respiratory therapy students who felt less confident and prepared for next academic year was 75.4%, which considered a high percentage when compared to medical students’ percentage.
The majority of respiratory therapy students experienced disturbance in their clinical practice because of the pandemic. However, the disturbance was not significantly associated with any of the variables, which might be a generalized to all students and did not affect a specific group. A study about ophthalmology trainees has also reported that their training were severely impacted by the pandemic. A percentage of 54.2% of trainees agreed about the effects on their training which considered a low percentage compared to the percentage of RT students in this study which is 77.5% [16]. The findings of this study that pertained to the impact of the pandemic on respiratory therapy students was consistent with the findings from previous studies [14–16]. However, in our study, students were asked if the pandemic had interfered with the their ability to connect between clinical and theoretical part, around 72.2% responded positively. The lack of connection between clinical and theoretical part was significantly associated with the academic year. The pandemic had interfered more likely with third year students, which might be due to the theoretical content of their curriculum. It includes the basic skills that need to be practiced, and without practicing these skills, it might be easily forgotten for most of the students. The lack of connection between clinical and theoretical part is a new challenge that this study have identified, which needs to be investigated on a larger scale to address a potential solutions.
Studies have identified other impacts on students that was introduced due to the pandemic [14, 17, 18]. In addition to the effects on education and practice that Harries et al. study in 2020 has investigated, it identified the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on medical students’ personally and professionally. It reported that 84.1% of medical students had moderate effects on their stress and anxiety levels because of the pandemic [14]. Moreover, a study about radiology students had identified several challenges/concerns of COVID-19 pandemic that affected students and their training. The reported challenges/concerns by the respondents were related to financial, spreading infection to / isolation from family and friends, concerns about training assessment, lack of available patients for practice and assessment, and unavailability of preceptors [17]. In addition, a study about dental students and clinical staff showed that students and staff are aware of the health risk in their working area, which increased their stress and affected their clinical performance, particularly for students. 53% of the students reported that the pandemic has negatively impacted their clinical performance [18].
Strengths
To the best of our knowledge, there is a lack of research in the field of COVID-19 effects on healthcare professions, especially respiratory therapy. Moreover, the importance of this study is to investigate the direct impact of COVID-19 virtual training on the quality of respiratory therapy clinical years.
Limitations
Regarding the study design (cross-sectional), this study assessed the current effect of COVID-19 on respiratory therapy students; however, there was no follow-up period for the respondents. As a result, the long-term impact of the pandemic on the transition period over the study years was not yet be determined in this study.
Recommendations
Future research is guaranteed to investigate the long term impact on students’ performance in the clinical practice after graduation. Another recommendation for future research is to investigate the useful colleges’ preparations during the pandemic that helped students in their education and practice. Moreover, it is important to investigate the different learning resources that were found by students during the pandemic to compensate for the lack of college’s offered resources.