Authors: Annamma K, Puziah Y, Aini A, Azimah. MM, Wong PY.
Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, nursing students are not involved in clinical practice due to safety reasons. However, the COVID-19 pandemic is continuing to affect many across the globe, and nursing students may soon return to clinical to meet the training requirement and for competency development. As non-involvers in the clinical practice during the pandemic, the nursing students lack a clear understanding of the infection control precautions. They may soon commence clinical practice when the pandemic still prevalent make the nursing students vulnerable to acquire COVID-19 infection. Therefore, this research aimed to assess nursing student's perceptions regarding clinical infection prevention practices and risk perception related to occupational exposure to the COVID-19 virus.
Methods: This cross-sectional study included 240 nursing students from one of the private nursing colleges in Malaysia. A questionnaire to assess the perception towards infection control practices for COVID-19 and risk perceptions of acquiring COVID-19 virus infection was developed through a literature review and subjected the tool to pilot testing and validation.
Results: The findings show that respondents positively rated the importance of infection control practices on 27 variables on a Likert scale of 1-5, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree (M= 4.57; S.D. =0.63). Majority of the nursing students agreed to be comfortable to care for COVID-19 patients (M=3.64; SD= .81; SE Mean= .052). The risk perception score was 3.9 of 5 points.
Conclusion: Improvement in infection control practices awareness for COVID-19 can help promote the active practice of infection control measures during their clinical rotation. Given the characteristics of nursing students, it is necessary to develop and apply an effective and viable educational program related to the prevention of COVID-19 infection.
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