Background: There was a concern about the shortage of nurses that resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, universities and university colleges were instructed to continue educating nursing professionals but were challenged by the social distancing and the limitations of clinical placements and clinical-field instructors. Clinical placement is essential in the students' development of practical skills and knowledge. Thus, transitioning to a digital follow-up platform of communication with the students between the universities/college and the clinical practice sites became necessary.
Purpose: To obtain knowledge about the experiences from the university/college teachers, students, and clinical-field instructors regarding the transition to a digital learning environment that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: Qualitative individual digital interviews were conducted for data collection at three different nursing education programs from three Norwegian university/university college sites. Five students, four clinical-field instructors, and nine university/college teachers participated (n = 18).
Results: The inductive analyses identified two main themes: (1) Efficiency compromising pedagogical quality, and (2) Digital alienation.
Conclusions: Students and university/college teachers were worried about fluctuating quality with digital pedagogical. There were concerns that the students educated during this period will have reduced clinical competencies.
Copyright: © 2023 Svendsen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.