HOLYOKE — For students in health care fields, hands-on, clinical learning is key to understanding how to work with actual patients. But with a shift to remote learning due to COVID-19, many of these students are finding their clinical rotations and internships canceled.
Switching to remote learning has been an adjustment for all students used to the classroom, but many students in health care fields have been particularly affected by difficulty in digitally replicating these programs. For some, these cancellations can push back graduation and job searches.
In the radiologic technology program at Holyoke Community College, students must meet a set number of competency standards outlined by the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists. But with the campus closed, students who still had competencies to complete will probably have their graduations delayed, said Mary Buckley, director of the HCC Radiologic technology program.
Radiologic technology students must “learn how to interact with the patients, how to position the patients for the X-rays, try to obtain diagnostic X-rays,” Buckley said. “That’s a very psychomotor task, and they’re not having the opportunity to practice that or to get the competencies right now.”
Moving lectures from the classroom to an online platform has been a fairly smooth transition, she said, but the lack of access to clinical sites, campus facilities and face-to-face instruction has been a greater challenge.
“We don’t know when students will be able to return to the clinical sites, we don’t know when students might be able to return to the school building … so my thought is that everything is going to be delayed, in terms of a timeframe,” Buckley said.
Others are so far avoiding this setback. In the nursing program at Holyoke Community College, seniors are still on track to graduate on time thanks to simulations, said Kara Moriarty, an assistant professor in the college’s nursing program and a registered nurse.
But even with the expectation of graduating on time, the shift comes with challenges for students.
“It takes a lot of new learning on how to do the online program and how to answer the questions properly, and it’s time-consuming,” said Melanie Monteiro, a senior nursing student at HCC, “but it’s better than not being able to go to clinical and not being able to graduate.”
Monteiro said she finds some aspects of the simulations helpful and “very similar to clinical aspects,” highlighting tasks that involve evaluating which patients need the most immediate care, delegating among nursing staff, giving scheduled rounds of medication and anticipating “curveballs” throughout the day.
But Kayla MacDonald, also a senior nursing student at HCC, finds the simulation learning “very different.”
“I feel that a big part of nursing is being able to build a rapport with your patients, and the online system is informative but impersonal because you are not interacting with patients,” MacDonald said via email. “I very much enjoyed caring for and listening to my patients. I am a people person.
“What we are using is a good alternative for the situation we are in, but I could not imagine not ever having a real, live patient which honestly was my favorite part of nursing school,” she added, “but I am grateful that I had the opportunity to do so.”
While Moriarty does not anticipate major setbacks for graduating students, she said that students who are not as far into the program may encounter more significant problems if shutdowns last into the fall semester, as students entering their second year of the two-year program would not have had hands-on, clinical learning experience for half of their second semester.
“I don’t think anyone has even started to wrap their heads around that yet,” Moriarty said. Prolonged use of online simulations also raises the issue of whether students are getting the education that they paid for, she added.
While the nursing students at HCC expect to graduate on time, Jennifer York, chairwoman of the veterinary technician program at HCC, said that some of her students are in the same boat as those in the radiologic technology program.
Some veterinary practices are still allowing students to work, which has helped some students come up with creative solutions: one student wears a GoPro camera at work and sends the video footage along to York for approval, for example. But many practices are too overwhelmed to work with students at the moment, York said, which limits this option for many students.
“It’s really clear that if our students can’t get those skills done on their own and get them videotaped for us to evaluate, they won’t be able to graduate on time,” York said.
“The stressful thing is that they’ve been working really hard to get to the end of their degree, and several of them won’t be able to graduate this semester,” she added, “and we don’t know when they will.”
Jacquelyn Voghel can be reached at jvoghel@gazettenet.com.