Willingness of Graduate Nursing Students to Provide Care for COVID-19 Patients

Abstract

Nurses play a key role in management and care services to maintain patient safety; however, with the emergence of COVID-19, the number of nurses still continues to decline. Due to the on-going problem that even novice nurses may see as a major challenge, this study aims to identify whether nursing graduates are willing to participate in the care of COVID-19 patients. The study is cross-sectional where a total of 146 conveniently chosen nursing graduates currently enrolled in Nursing Review Centers in the Philippines preparing to take the Nurse Licensure Examination. The data were collected using Google forms from August to September 2020 using a four-part questionnaire which includes demographic infor-mation sheet, COVID-19 Perceived Risk Scale, Fear of COVID-19 Scale, and questions pertaining to their willingness to care for COVID-19 patients. Descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation and in-ferential statistics such as Mann-Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis and Spearman rho were used to analyze the data. After gathering the information from the participants, the results had ultimately shown that the majority of the participants (86.3%) are willing to care for COVID-19 patients. The ones with the most significant positive correlation with willing-ness were age (p = 0.008), self-reported health (p = 0.000), self-reported knowledge about COVID-19 (p = 0.001), and interest to become a Registered Nurses (p = 0.000). Based on these results, the majority of the participants had been willing to care for patients with COVID-19, although the factors that influence were associated with their willingness differ.