The impact of Covid-19 on the mental health, resilience, well-being, and supported learning experiences of current students and recent graduates of OU nursing and social work programmes.

This study provided insights into factors that impacted on the mental health, wellbeing and supported learning experiences of OU nursing and social work students and whether being a distance learner benefited or hindered their progress during the pandemic.

Little is known about the impact of Covid-19 on the professional studies and personal lives of nursing and social work students who are bona fide non-traditional distance learners, however there is a large body of knowledge about traditional student experiences.

Students on nursing, nursing associate, and social work programmes train for their professional qualified roles through a combination of curriculum learning and placement experiences. Both types of learning were heavily disrupted during the acute response phase to Covid-19.

The available body of evidence relates mainly to nursing students on traditional face to face (f2f) programmes. A major research project with large nursing cohorts also explored mixed student groups of allied health professionals (AHPs) (HEA, 2022). A scoping review of the literature found a marked gap in the evidence base (Watson & De-Lappe, 2023). The voices of distance learning and minority ethnic nursing students were almost absent from the literature. It was clear that these students were not being heard. This project set out to bridge that gap. What we did.

A large-scale study was conducted exploring the impact of Covid-19 on the health, wellbeing, and learning experiences of current students and recent alumni of Open University nursing and social work professional programmes.

How we did it, Following ethical (HREC) and student research panel (SRPP) approval, we used A cross-sectional survey that allowed us to collect a wide range of diverse quantitative and qualitative data without the time normally required by other methods. We followed this up by using focus groups to further explore comments made by students in the survey. pg. 9 Data analysis was done using Qualtrics for the quantitative analysis and NVIVO for the qualitative aspects of the survey. Analysis took place based on cohort responses which were, student nurses, nursing associates, nursing alumni and social work students.