Answers to Your Fears About COVID-19 (and 3 ways we can help you today)

coronavirus nursing schools

(click above to listen to the podcast episode)

You’re probably feeling a bit scared right now . . .

Maybe you’re nursing school just canceled clinicals or moved classes 100% online.  Now, on top of everything that it is to be a nursing student, you are dealing with the fear brought on by COVID-19 (coronavirus).

Last night, I asked: “How has COVID-19 impacted you as a nursing student?” . . . I got hundreds of responses.

So I wanted to make a quick podcast to answer some of those concerns.

Our Response to COVID-19

We are implementing an aggressive response to COVID-19 for nursing students and nursing school impacted.  You can see all of our efforts HERE (nursing.com/lp/covid).

Some of our efforts include:

  • Reducing the price of our NURSING STUDENT & NCLEX Academies by 36% until May 15, 2020
  • Providing free student accounts to any nursing school experiencing closures until May 15, 2020
  • Develop a Nursing Clinical 360 course
  • Donating up to $10,000 to WHO COVID-19 Response Fund
  • Providing pizza 🍕  dinners to night shift nurses

We Are All In This Together

From the early days of NURSING.com (NRSNG), I used to say “We’re all in this together . . . “.  That is true now more than ever.

We need you.  I hope this podcast episode helps reduce some of your fears or at least gives you some motivation to keep going.

coronavirus nursing school

Resources Mentioned In The Episode

nursing covid response

What are you struggling with in nursing school?

NURSING.com is the BEST place to learn nursing.  With over 2,000+ clear, concise, and visual lessons, there is something for you!

Jon Haws, BS, BSN, RN, Alumnus CCRN

Jon Haws, BS, BSN, RN, Alumnus CCRN

Jon Haws RN began his nursing career at a Level I Trauma ICU in DFW working as a code team nurse, charge nurse, and preceptor. Frustrated with the nursing education process, Jon started NURSING.com in 2014 with a desire to provide tools and confidence to nursing students around the globe. When he's not busting out content for NURSING.com, Jon enjoys spending time with his two kids and wife.

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Podcast Transcription

Welcome to another episode of the nursing.com podcast. My name is Jon Haws RN.
I’m the founder of nursing.com and today’s episode is a little different. I’m sitting on
the floor in my home delivering this podcast because we’re working completely
remoted nursing.com right now due to coven 19 due to the Corona virus. So just like
many of you, we’re social distancing, we’re doing everything we should be doing to
try to limit the spread of the Corona virus. And as such, I’m actually at home so
you’ll have to excuse the audio quality. I’m sitting on the floor in a bedroom with a
pillow set up, talking directly into my laptop. And that’s actually what I want to talk
about today. Guys. I want to talk about all this uncertainty, um, and all these
different emotions that you probably have going around, all these different
questions, all these different fears that you have going around right now due to
Corona virus as a nursing student or as a brand new nurse.
And I want to try to answer some of those questions and I want to tell you a little bit
about our response, uh, to the Corona virus and how we can help you, um, with
some of those concerns with some of those fears. Uh, as this continues to develop
and as this continues to go forward. So last night I asked a bunch of our users and I
asked a bunch of people in the nursing family, you know, what some of their
concerns are, what, how this is impacting them. And I got a lot of answers. I got
hundreds and hundreds of answers and I broke it down into about four or five that I
wanted to discuss and I wanted to work through and maybe give you guys some
tips and more than anything, hopefully give you guys some encouragement and
some confidence as we go through this.
Because again, I know this is an incredibly scary time. So you guys are dealing with
a lot of ambiguity, you’re dealing with a lot of fears. And the hard thing is there’s
not a lot of guidance being provided out there by the end CSBM by the boards of
nursing, by nursing schools, by hospitals. Because this is an entirely new thing. This
is something that none of us have seen before. Um, and the system and the
infrastructure was not set up in, is not set up to handle this. And so what we see
unfortunately is mixed messaging and poor clarification from a governing bodies
like the board of nursing, like the um, uh, nursing schools like hospitals because
we’re not set up, we’re not prepared for that and things aren’t ready for that. But,
and I’m sorry for that you guys, I apologize for that. I can’t imagine going through
nursing school, uh, with all of this going on.
I can’t imagine how hard it is going through nursing school is hard enough and I
know throwing this wrench in there makes it that much harder, but I won’t let you
guys know that the goal doesn’t change. Your goal of becoming a nurse doesn’t
change. Okay? Your destination has not changed. You’re still going to become a
nurse. You’re still going to reach that goal and you’re still going to be working on the
floor as a nurse. And I don’t want this once in a hundred years pandemic, uh, deter
you from that goal. You’re going to figure this out and you’re going to get through it.
The first thing that came to my mind as I read through the hundreds and hundreds
of responses was something called the serenity prayer. Now, most of you have
probably heard this in some way or another, something that alcoholics anonymous
use. That’s not where I learned it, but, um, and it’s something that’s a pretty
common within, uh, several religious realms. Now, I’m not necessarily religious,
definitely not an alcoholic. Um, I wanted to let you guys know what this prayer is
and I want to help you apply it, um, as you go through this challenging time. So the
prayer goes something like this. Serenity prayer goes, give me the grace to accept
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the things I cannot change and to change the things which should be changed and
the wisdom to distinguish between the two.
Wow.
So right now there are so many things that you cannot change. We cannot rewind
the clock three months and avoid this spread. We cannot change the fact that we
must be doing social distancing and we cannot change the nursing schools. The
best thing to do is to close
[inaudible].
But we should have the courage to change the way that we approach this to change
the way that we see this and to change the way that we move forward individually.
There’s many things that you can change and there’s many things that you can not
with this. And I want you guys to take a deep breath and realize that there are so
many things that you cannot change with this
[inaudible].
But one of the things that doesn’t change is your goal and you will become a nurse
still. When I posted this on the, our private Facebook group got a response from
Jenna and Jenna was on the podcast several months ago, maybe a year ago even.
And she’s now been working as a nurse for over a year. And here’s what she said,
she said, sending love to every nursing student out there. We need you now more
than ever, work in the hospital as an are in here and they have shut down all
colleges, not let any visitors in the hospital and put us on mandatory education.
Keep your head up nursing students, you got this nursing strong. I think that’s such
a beautiful quote. We need you now more than ever. While I can’t change or remove
all the restrictions and the different things that are happening, I want to help you
possibly get a little bit more faith and courage in your ability to get through this.
Now what I want to do now guys is I want to talk about some of the main concerns
that nursing students had and I want to try to give some, uh, help with that. All
right, so the first one was, and the one that I want to address first is if you’re in
clicks with scheduled and now you’re worried it’s going to be canceled, maybe you
have it scheduled next week in a couple of weeks, maybe in a couple of months.
And you’re sitting there trying to figure out what you need to do. This is scary
and I completely understand this, what Pearson view has done. So Pearson view is
the, the company who administers this exam. What they have done is they set up a
website that they’re updating very frequently with exam closures and places and
uh, and what you need to know. So unless you see that your date is canceled on this
website or get communication from them, you need to move forward with your
date. This website is home dot Pearson vue.com/corona virus dash update dash U S
I’ll put that in the show notes, but a home dot Pearson vue.com/ coronavirus-
update.us on this website. They’re updating every day different things that you
need to know by state about if your exam location is open. So for example, I’m on
the website right now. If I click on Pennsylvania, it says test delivery is currently
suspended at both Pearson owned and third party testing centers throughout the
following counties, Montgomery, Delaware, bucks and Chester. We will resume
exam delivery services with the government determines that is safe. Candidates
with canceled exams will either receive a return refund if paid to Pearson view or an
extension to determine as determined by your exam sponsor. So realize that you’re
going to be notified on this website. They will notify you, they’ll give you a refund or
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they’ll give you an extension. So worst case scenario, you have a little more time to
prepare for your in clicks, but until you see your date pop up on here, continued to
prepare for your in clicks as if nothing has changed.
And right now you have more time in your home to study. All right, so continue to
focus as if nothing has changed but continue to watch this website. Um, and
monitor if that data’s changed. All right, so try to put those thoughts of, of if it’s
changed or what you need to know out and just continue to prepare until you find
out. Worst case scenario, you have a little bit more time to prepare. Another one
that I keep seeing and I think that is difficult is clinicals have been accelerated as
well as testing, meaning that they’re bunching all your clinicals together to get ’em
out before hospitals closed down to you. Um, and then they’ve also bunched up
your tests so they can get them done before they need to go. Um,
[inaudible]
um, remote. And then also the fear of, of, of learning and getting all the clinicals
done.
So this is a big concern, right, that you’re, you’re having to rush through all your
clinicals and then they’re adding all these tests up, um, and making them more
condensed and faster. What I want to give you guys here is something called the a B
C D E framework. The ABCD framework is something from a book called eat that
frog. If you have a little bit of downtime during this time, I would suggest reading it,
but essentially what the ABCD framework ABC D framework does is it gives you a
way to prioritize all the, all of your tasks and what I like it more than like a one, two,
three. A prioritization is an ABC. D is just like the way that we do ABCs in healthcare.
We don’t address breathing until all airway issues have been dealt with. We don’t
address circulation until a breathing issues have been dealt with.
This is the same with a B C D your a tasks are things that carry huge, um,
ramifications if you don’t complete them and you must complete all a tasks before
you complete any B tasks. B, tasks carry minor ramifications and they can be
completed after a tasks but must be completed before C tasks. C tests don’t carry
much ramification at all. D tasks are things that you can delegate or put off and E
task don’t really need to be done at all and they carry no ramification whatsoever.
What I want you guys to do and what I believe will help you is as you’re trying to
now sit down and re-prioritize all the things that you must do is to assign an ABC, D
or E to each of them.
Now taking an exam that is an a task you have to take an exam, but your different
exams matter differently. A med surge exam in a class that’s worth four credits
matters more than a, an exam and a research class that only counts for one point. If
you’re dealing with shortened timelines, focus your energies where they’re going to
deliver the most results and where they’re going to mean the most. So focus your
energies on that med surge exam, study more there. And as long as you pass that
research class, you’re going to be fine. So put as little time there as you need to put
there. And then if you have a discussion question, that’s worth half a point.
Yeah,
that becomes any task. It carries almost no ramifications and you just really don’t
need to do it. Assign that in, eat. So the first thing you need to do is sit down with a
piece of paper with the Google calendar, with your planner. Write down everything it
is that you have to do. Clinicals tests, um, reports, papers, whatever it is. Assign an
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a, B, C, D or E to each of them and realize that they’re not all A’s. That’s going to be
the hardest part is realizing and accepting that they’re not all A’s and some things
just don’t need to be done or need to be pushed and then start attacking all of your
A’s once all your A’s are done, moved to your BS, once all your BS are done, moved
to your CS
[inaudible].
Now, one fear that people have is with clinicals being canceled or clinicals becoming
remote, um, is that they’re not gonna be able to learn everything that need to learn
before they start working as a nurse. I think that’s a valid concern, but let me try to
ease that concern right now. While it is important that you do clinicals and you
absorb all the knowledge that you can in those experiences, most of the learning as
a nurse occurs after you graduate and begin working as a nurse. Let me get a drink
a coffee real quick.
Oh,
so while it is incredibly important that you do your clinicals and that you focus while
you’re there, if you don’t have a chance to do them
and it’s two or three clinical that you’re not able to do, I do want you to know that
that’s going to be okay. When I began working as a nurse, I started working in the
neuro ICU. Now my school wasn’t a great nursing school and I didn’t have a chance
to learn a lot about neuro before I started working in the neuro ICU. So almost
everything was brand new to me and I was terrified. But what I did at that moment
is I bought books on neuro nursing. I learned everything that I could about neuro
nursing and I learned, I became an incredible neuro ICU nurse. So what I want you
to realize is those clinical opportunities in school are important, but they aren’t
going to make or break your success as a nurse when you finish, if they’re canceled,
if they’re virtual, do what you can to do well in them. Realizing that most of your
learning as a nurse, regardless of this situation, is going to occur once you become
a nurse and once you start practicing.
All right.
Another thing I want to address is childcare. A lot of you have children and now you
don’t have access to childcare. There’s schools are being closed, childcare facilities
are being closed. So how do you handle that? This is a tough one and I don’t have a
great solution for this, but I did want to address it because it is a tough one and I
want to give maybe a couple of tips with nursing.com we are forced or we’ve
decided to work remote to keep our employees safe and to help try to flatten the
curve. Right. Um, and so my wife and I are both at home. Our children’s school has
been canceled. So one thing that we’ve done, my wife and I is we’ve, we sit down
each night and we develop a schedule for the next day and we say, well, I have this
meeting, I have that meeting. Uh, and we try to work our schedules around that.
Now we have that luxury of being able to work from home and being able to work
remote.
But I guess the takeaway is if you had that luxury, make sure you do sit down and
do that planning with your spouse or with your significant other or with someone
who is close to you and try to plan out. These are the things that I must attend.
These are the things that would be good to attend, right? Turn all your meetings into
a, B, C, D and make sure you’re at the places you need to be and you’re not going
to the places that you don’t have to be. I would recommend that you avoid childcare
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facilities. Um, that’s a great place for your kids to pick up the virus and bring it
home even if they’re not going to get too sick, even if you’re not going to get too
sick. If they come in contact with grandma and grandpa, grandma and grandpa
might become very sick.
So if at all possible, please try to avoid childcare facilities. Um, if you have someone
close to you, um, a cousin, a best friend, anybody who has a little bit more flexibility
in their schedule and you must go to a clinical, do what you can to get them to
volunteer some time to watch your children for a short amount of time as possible.
Say, look, you know, I need you here for this one hour. I can do my paperwork and
stuff. It’s going to be hard, but I can do it when I’m home with the kids. But please
come and watch the kids for this time. Recommend to them and teach them all the
things you’ve learned about hand hygiene, this how you wash your hands, um, and
make sure that they’re, uh, abiding by all the, the, the recommendations there. But
try to keep it somebody that, you know, try to keep it as few people as possible to
keep your kids away from as many people as possible.
Um, and where possible do work when you’re with your kids, whether that’s at
home, um, where, you know, you can have your kids there, they can be working on
some projects or having some free time. Um, and you could be working on your
clinicals. That is a really hard one guys. Um, but please, uh, do what you can to
keep your children safe and to keep the community safe as well. You guys, this is a
really challenging time and I’m not gonna play that down. Um, you guys are
incredible. You guys are awesome. We need you now more than ever. Now let me
tell you about a couple things that we’re doing in response to coven 19. The first
thing is, guys, if your classes have become online, this is the perfect chance to, to
dive in and to binge watch nursing.com if you already have an account, I encourage
you to get in there, shut off the Netflix, shut off the Hulu, get into nursing.com and
study there. What we’ve seen is the nursing students who use nursing.com are able
to say four hours of study time a week. Now, more than ever, you need to be saving
study time. We also see that their grades improve and they have in collects pass
rates that are just off the charge 99.86 or something like that. I think it was this last
year.
There is a slight learning curve when you get into nursing.com the first time, but
don’t worry about that. Just get into the lesson that you need to watch. If you have a
a class or a lecture over heart failure, get in and just watch that heart failure occur
course. As you get more comfortable with the system, start building study plans,
build a study plan around perfusion or around cardiac or whatever it is and spend
the time there. Don’t be so overwhelmed with everything that’s going on that you
don’t study the most helpful resource that you have, which is nursing.com get in
there, watch videos, listen to lectures, download the app, listen to lectures as you’re
sitting in bed. Listen to lectures. Um, as you’re with your children, just put your
headphones in, be with your kids, let them watch their cartoons, whatever, or work
on things and you listen to lectures, uh, through the app, but get in there and use
nursing.com.
Here’s a couple of things that we’re doing specifically though to help. Um, we have
opened up nursing.com to any nursing school that has been impacted or closed
down, whether clinical or classroom sites. If you’re an educator or if you have
access to your educator. We have opened up, uh, nursing.com access for these
schools until May 15th. So if your nursing school has been closed down, if you are
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an educated cater, please reach out to us and we want to help you implement
nursing.com lectures, um, into our four year students. So we will give a free account
to every student at your college until uh, May 15th so that they have access to
phenomenal instructors, uh, through our online [email protected] to get that
and to talk with us about that. Please email
[email protected] This is again limited to educators, um,
who have access to their students. Um, and we can help you guys get this set up.
This has already been used by, I can’t remember, Sandy had told me last night, but
it was several thousand nursing students now have access to this, um, through their
educators and through their schools. So you can set up free school account for all of
your students until May 15th. We want to help you guys, um, educate your
students. The next thing that we’ve done is we’ve opened up our nursing student
Academy to a seven day free trial. We want to get you guys in there. We want to get
you guys using it and we want you to be able to access it and use it as much as you
can. On top of that, we’ve reduced the cost by 36% again until May 15th. If you go
to nursing.com, you can see a little banner there where you can get in there for 36%
off a free trial. Um, uh, for seven days and get comfortable with the system.
Um, and use it. This is so important that you guys get in there and use it. We know
the finances are tight, we know that everything’s tight and so we’re trying to help
you guys out as much as we can, um, and build to keep our doors open and our
lights on uh, at the same time. So go over to nursing.com and you can get access to
that. Again, it’s 36% off, seven day free trial of the nursing student Academy on top
of that to help nursing schools, especially those that are having clinicals closed
tomorrow we are releasing what is called our nursing clinical three 60 course. We’re
spending this together right now as quickly as we can to help nursing schools who
are struggling with clinicals and need a place for their students to, to see clinical
skills being done to see case studies, to see care plans and things like that.
This is going to be called nursing clinical three 60. We are going to open that course
up to everyone. That’s going to be free to everyone. Um, you don’t have to pay a
dime. You can access all the videos, all the case studies, all the care plans that are
in that course. Um, and for nursing schools, we want to make sure you guys have
this so you can implement it as a replacement for clinical hours for your students.
This will be up on the website tomorrow. It’s going to be nursing clinical three 60.
It’s going to be open to everyone. If you’re a member of the Academy, you’ll be able
to access immediately. If you haven’t created an account yet, you need to create an
account, but it is free and is open to everyone if you are a nursing school and need
help finding replacements for nursing clinical to engage your students and to get
them more involved and to replace clinicals.
This nursing clinical three 60 will be open tomorrow is our goal. We’re rushing on it
right now. Again, we’re remote and distributed right now, so we’re working on as
fast as we can, but please go to our, or please email
[email protected] if you’re an educator and would like
access to this for your students, this is going to be a huge help. It has something
like 38 nursing skill videos plus 18 head to toe assessment videos. These are live on
human patients plus a multiple pharmacology skill videos plus 50 nursing care plan
videos. And then something like 18 a nursing case studies that are written by ed
and ICU nurses. This is a great way to help your students see what nurses actually
do and to think like a nurse. And this again is completely free to everyone to be able
to access this as nursing clinical three 60 it’ll be live on Tuesday, um, March 17th
and we want to get you guys in there.
If you’re a nursing educator, please reach out to Sandy S a N D [email protected] and
we will get you an account set up for all of your students. Uh, to access during this,
uh, code virus that’s going around until may, uh, 15th if you’re a student, um, and
don’t have access through your school, you can get the nursing student Academy
for 36% off, seven day free trial because we want to get you guys in there. We want
to help you ease some of this concern and some of this pain. Um, and if you’re
preparing for influx, we’ve also reduced the price of the in clicks Academy by 36%.
So you get six month access for just a $210. So we want to help you guys get what
you need. We love you guys. We want you to succeed. We know that you can
succeed. Please, please, please have a take, a deep breath and accept those things
that you can not change.
Try to force them out of your mind and have courage to attack those things that you
can prioritize your tasks. Realize that the exponential learning occurs after nursing
school and realized that we are here to help you. If you go to nursing.com, there is a
banner there where you’ll see all of our response to the Kobe virus. Um, and you can
learn about all the different things that we’re doing to help. On top of this, we’re
also donating money to who we’re giving pizza parties to night shift nurses. Uh, and
we’re doing a lot to try to help out guys because this is a scary time and we want to
help you guys out. We want to ease some of those fears, ease some of those
burdens, and we need you guys. We love you so much. Thank you for all that you
do. Go out and be your best self today. Happy nursing

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