EXAMINING THE EDUCATIONAL NEEDS AND BEHAVIOR OF NURSING STUDENTS IN PASSING THROUGH THE PSYCHOLOGICAL COMFORT ZONE DURING THE COVID-19 OUTBREAK: A MIXED METHOD STUDY

A better understanding of nursing students' educational needs and behavior can play an important role in preventing, investigating, educating, and providing care during the outbreak of infectious diseases such as Covid-19 and limiting the spread of these infections. The aimof this study was to examine the educational needs and behavior of nursing students in passing through the psychological comfort zone during the Covid-19 outbreak.

This research was an explanatory sequential mixed methods design. The research population was the third and fourth-year undergraduate nursing students of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. Sampling in the qualitative phase was done using the purposive method and in the quantitative phase using the census method. In order to investigate the educational needs of nursing students, a semi-structured interview was used, and a researcher-made questionnaire based on the components of the comfort zone model was used to investigate the students' behavior. The data was analyzed in SPSS 16 software using descriptive and inferential statistical methods.

Twenty-two needs were identified as educational needs of nursing students during the covid-19 pandemic. The needs were classified into four areas: disease recognition, self-care against the transmission of infection, nursing care of patients with or suspected of covid-19, and psychological and physiological needs. The needs of the field of self-care against the transmission of infection with ten components had a higher priority, and nursing students felt a greater need for training in this field. Examining the behavior of nursing students one year after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic showed that 37.5% of students were in the panic zone, 53.7% in the learning zone, and 62.2% in the growth zone.

The Covid-19 pandemic will not be the first and the last pandemic crisis in the world. The results of the present study give this message to the managers and lecturers of nursing schools that information and skill training in such incidents, especially in the field of self-care, can be the best type of support for students so that they can take care of themselves and patients by being in the growth zone.