Beyond the Emergency: Nursing Students’ Reflections on the Long-Term Professional and Psychological Impacts of COVID-19 Crisis Learning

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic transformed healthcare education, increasing the shift to digital tools and establishing a hybrid curriculum blending online learning with traditional clinical practice. This study aims to understand how this shift impacts the educational growth and skill building of nursing students. A qualitative approach was conducted to understand the experience of Hong Kong nursing students adapting to online learning during the pandemic and beyond. Fifty nursing students were interviewed, and Colaizzi’s phenomenological method revealed key themes in their learning narratives. The analysis revealed four distinct themes characterizing the students’ experiences: (i) Learning on their terms: the mandated shift in healthcare reflecting a lack of agency during the educational transition; (ii) Knowledge without touch: the perceived incompetence of the COVID-19 nursing cohort, highlighting anxieties regarding a lack of hands-on clinical proficiency; (iii) Words left unsaid: The weight of insecurity, indicating a decline in interpersonal skills due to isolation; and (iv) Beyond the perfect algorithm: the unrehearsed art of care, describing the difficulty in translating digital simulations to complex, human-centric patient care. Findings show that while digital progress ensured continuity in education, it also contributed to reduced clinical confidence, weaker communication skills, and shifts in how nursing students approached their learning. Consequently, the post-COVID environment demands that training programs evolve to address these specific deficits. Advancing the existing pandemic-era nursing literature, this study emphasizes the need for diverse, targeted teaching methods to mitigate these gaps. By intentionally bridging theoretical knowledge with hands-on clinical practice, educators can better support student wellbeing and help restore the confidence and competence required of future graduates.

1. Introduction

The training of healthcare professionals connects academic study with the healthcare system, drawing on both in-depth theoretical teaching and engaging clinical practice [1,2]. This approach is essential for training practitioners to understand and apply nursing theories and principles in ways that build on patient care, support quality outcomes, and convey the economic challenges of modern healthcare [3]. Across the world, including Hong Kong, healthcare professional training has shifted markedly over time. Education has progressed from a vocational, hospital-centric system to a university-level academic framework, resulting in bachelor’s degree programs [3,4,5,6]. The evolution was driven by a goal to enhance theoretical knowledge, research literacy, and evidence-based practice, eventually preparing practitioners for complex clinical decision-making and problem-based learning [7].

However, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which was declared by the World Health Organization in early 2020, introduced an abrupt and profound disruption to this established educational ecosystem [8,9,10,11]. As the symbiotic relationship between classroom learning and on-site clinical training was progressing, the global health crisis brought it to a sudden halt [3]. To restrain the virus’s spread, strict lockdowns and safety protocols were now in effect [12]. Consequently, all in-person instruction was suspended immediately, including the critical cessation of clinical placements. Healthcare programs worldwide faced an unprecedented challenge when students were banned from clinical settings. This move, while necessary for safety, effectively severed their essential connection to real-world patient care [13,14,15].

This unexpected turn of events necessitated an immediate switch to virtual classrooms. Because this transition happened so quickly and without much testing, it fundamentally changed the way healthcare curriculums were taught [16]. This shift brought about a unique set of educational obstacles. It raised significant concerns regarding whether virtual platforms are truly effective for a discipline rooted in practical, hands-on skills [17,18].

The widespread migration from traditional face-to-face classrooms to online or virtual learning environments constitutes a transformative event in higher education. Despite the broad implications of this shift, there has been limited empirical investigation into its multifaceted impact on the specialized training of nursing students [19,20]. Much of the existing research focuses on what nursing students experienced during the sudden shift to emergency remote learning. However, a significant gap remains regarding the upcoming challenges students face as they transition into the post-COVID clinical environment, particularly for those negotiating the recognizable cultural and educational landscape of the Chinese community. This study goes beyond examining the initial pandemic-era remote learning phase. Instead, it advances our current understanding by exploring students’ lived experiences of the ongoing challenges present in the post-COVID era. By analyzing how students perceive these past disruptions as affecting their current practical skills and core competencies, this study provides significant qualitative insights into how we can strengthen more resilient nursing education systems for future public health crises.

Theoretical Framework

This study integrates Complexity Theory to delineate macro-level systemic disruptions, and Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle to analyze micro-level skills obtainment [21,22,23]. Simultaneously, this combined framework directly drives our analysis and research questions regarding how confused environments impact students competency development. Complexity Theory frames the educational ecosystem as a complex adaptive system (CAS) that, having been profoundly concerned, has now re-stabilized into a new, hybrid state [21]. The post-pandemic landscape is not a reversion to pre-2020 norms but an evolved system where digital and in-person modalities are intricately interwoven—a phenomenon this theory explains as a developing property of a resilient system.

Within this new ecosystem, the application of Kolb’s Cycle reveals the direct and lasting impact on student competency in clinical settings [22,23]. The forced reconceptualization of concrete experience through digital tools, video demonstrations, virtual simulations, and telehealth has altered the learning pathway both in classroom mode and clinical practices [3,24]. Consequently, the post-pandemic nursing student cohort demonstrates a modified competency outline; they often possess enhanced digital literacy and telehealth essentials for modern healthcare but simultaneously face potential confidence deficits or experience gaps in specific psychomotor domains traditionally sharpened through extensive, hands-on patient interaction [25,26]. This dual framework is thus essential for evaluating the post-pandemic learning environment: Complexity Theory clarifies the lasting systemic shift toward hybrid education, while Kolb’s Cycle provides a rough lens to analyze how these changes affect students’ skill acquisition, clinical readiness, and overall preparedness for a technologically integrated and dynamically developing healthcare future. Therefore, the COVID-19 pandemic was a sudden and unprecedented public health crisis, resulting in a significant shortage of healthcare providers, particularly nursing professionals. This shortage, coupled with the heightened demand for nurses to care for patients during this critical period, has forced healthcare systems worldwide to request an increase in the nursing workforce [27]. New graduate healthcare professionals have been called upon to expand their roles in both clinical and community settings globally. This shift has been further necessitated by measures such as social isolation, quarantines, lockdowns, school shutdowns, and the suspension of elective surgical and non-acute procedures, all aimed at alleviating the escalating burden on healthcare services and clinical environments. This study aims to explore the lived experiences of nursing students in Hong Kong regarding the shift from face-to-face to online instruction prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, this study focuses on students’ perceptions and reflections regarding how this educational transition shaped their competency development and practical skills acquisition. The study focused on the essence and meaning nursing students attribute to this change in pedagogical delivery and its perceived impact on their professional development.

2. Methods

2.1. Study Design

This study applied a descriptive phenomenological design, rooted in Husserlian philosophy, to explore the lived experiences of nursing students in Hong Kong prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic [28,29]. This specific approach was selected because it focuses on capturing the pure, unrefined essence of a phenomenon, as it is consciously experienced, needed researchers to set aside prior assumptions. This philosophical foundation aligns perfectly with the study’s objective: to deeply understand the original, raw reality of extreme educational disruptions, including institutional lockdowns and the critical suspension of clinical placements, exactly as the students perceived them. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews, a method chosen to generate rich, detailed narratives of participants’ personal journeys. Using this approach enabled a deeper understanding of the challenges, adaptations, and personal meanings nursing students associated with the sudden shift in their educational setting. Placing nursing student voices at the center, the study allows a deeper understanding of healthcare education in the context of a global health crisis. To ensure methodological rigor and transparency, this study fully complies with Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research (COREQ) guidelines [30]. All key reporting elements have been carefully conveyed throughout the study, and a complete COREQ checklist is included as Supplementary Materials for reference (Supplementary File S1).

2.2. Participants

Using purposive sampling, 50 undergraduate nursing students were recruited from three universities in Hong Kong. The inclusion criteria required participants to be (1) aged 18 years or older; (2) full-time nursing students enrolled in Year 1 to Year 5 of their program; (3) actively enrolled during the COVID-19 pandemic; and (4) fluent in Cantonese. Having clinical placement experience during the pandemic was not a requirement for inclusion. Students with known mental health conditions, as well as non-nursing students, were excluded from the study. To identify students with known mental health conditions for exclusion, a screening step was applied during recruitment. Potential participants were asked to self-report any current mental health conditions. Those who self-reported a condition were requested to show evidence of a formal medical diagnosis from a physician or psychiatrist. For ethical reasons and to guarantee strict data privacy, the research team only visually verified this documentation and did not record or keep any copies of the medical records. Following visual verification, these individuals were also excluded from the study. While phenomenological saturation often occurs earlier, this larger sample ensured maximum variation across institutions during this unprecedented disruption. To adhere to health guidelines, semi-structured interviews were safely conducted via remote video-conferencing platforms like Zoom.

2.3. Data Collection

Following an introductory briefing about the study’s objectives, interested nursing students were invited to take part in either online or in-person interviews conducted between December 2022 and February 2023. To accommodate prevailing COVID-19 social restrictions at the time and to ensure participant comfort, students were given the option to select their preferred interview modality. Consequently, the majority of the interviews (41) were conducted online via video-conferencing platforms such as Zoom, while the remaining interviews (9) were conducted face-to-face. Each interview, lasting 40 to 70 min, was conducted in Chinese using a secure, password-protected video-conferencing platform or face-to-face interview at a time convenient for the participant. Consistency was ensured by using a semi-structed interview format for every session (see Supplementary Table S1). Field notes were taken throughout the process to document contextual observations, including depth and meaning to the data during analysis. All interviews were audio-recorded with participants’ written informed consent and transcribed verbatim. Participants were offered the chance to review their transcripts, but no corrections were requested. The interview guide was validated by nursing education experts for alignment, accompanied by pilot interviews with three participants to clarify prompts. Adhering to COREQ guidelines, trained doctorial researchers with no prior participant relationships conducted the interviews to prevent bias. Data collection and analysis were raised together. Data saturation was operationalized as informational redundancy, the point where no new themes appeared. This was reached at the 47th interview, confirmed when the final three interviews yielded no new conceptual insights.

2.4. Analysis Strategy

Data analysis utilized Colaizzi’s seven-step phenomenological approach, managed via NVivo software (NVivo Version 12, QSR International, Burlington, MA, USA) [31]. Following verbatim transcription by two researchers (T.Z. and Y.J.), the research team immersed themselves in the transcripts and field notes to achieve familiarization with the data. To ensure methodological transparency, the process involved extracting significant statements through line-by-line coding to identify phrases directly concerning the phenomenon [31]. Researchers then formulated meanings by abstracting the underlying essence of these statements while carrying on faithful to the original context. For example, a participant’s quote expressing emotional and social abilities initiated by the forced relocation to online learning (significant statement) was interpreted as emotional detachment (formulated meaning) and eventually classified under the “words left unsaid: the weight of insecurity” (theme cluster). By comparing similarities, formulated meanings were clustered into comprehensive themes and experiential patterns were shared. Finally, these themes were integrated to form an exhaustive description of the phenomenon, concluding with participant validation to confirm the finding’s accuracy.

2.5. Rigor

To ensure the study’s integrity, the analytical process was anchored in Lincoln and Guba’s framework for trustworthiness [32,33,34]. Following verbatim transcription, analysis proceeded using Colaizzi’s phenomenological method [31]. Three researchers (Y.A., C.C.K.J., and Y.K.M.R.) independently coded the data before collaboratively comparing sub-themes to achieve a consensus-based interpretation. Key strategies to enhance trustworthiness [31,32,33,34] included: member checking with participants to ensure credibility; purposeful sampling across institutions for transferability; an audit trial of the analysis for dependability; and reflexive team discussion to ensure confirmability (Supplementary Table S2). Member checking was conducted with 50 participants to prove the accuracy of the findings; because they confirmed that the interpretations captured their experiences perfectly, no changes were made to the results. This rigorous, multi-faceted process culminated in the final themes, which were derived through this negotiated agreement and are detailed in the results.

2.6. Ethical Considerations

Ethical considerations were central to the design and conduct to this study. The principle of informed consent was enacted by providing all individuals with a detailed explanation of the research objectives and processes, after which their formal consent was documented. It was emphasized that participants were voluntary and that they could discontinue their involvement at any stage without consequence. Furthermore, participant confidentiality and anonymity were carefully protected through vigorous security measures, involving data encryption and restricted access limited to the principal investigators. Ethical approval for this study was granted by the Research and Ethics Committee at Caritas Institute of Higher Education (HRE210109). To safeguard participant confidentiality, all digital data, including audio recordings and transcripts, were stored on secure, password-protected. Access to these files was strictly restricted to the core research team. In accordance with institutional data retention policies, all recordings and transcripts will be securely destroyed [three years] after the publication of the study’s findings. The research was conducted in full accordance with the ethical principles for human research outlines in the Declaration of Helsinki.

3. Results

The study sample of fifty (n = 50) full-time nursing students from academic institutions in Hong Kong. The participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 29 years, with a median age of 23. A comprehensive summary of participant demographics is provided in

Table 1. Characteristics of participants.

Characteristic	Frequency (n)	(%)
Gender
○ Male	25	50
○ Female	25	50
Age
○ 18–19	4	8
○ 20–21	10	20
○ 22–23	14	28
○ 24–25	16	32
○ 26–27	4	8
○ 28–29	2	4
○ >30	0	0
Years of enrolled nursing program
○ 1	10	20
○ 2	10	20
○ 3	10	20
○ 4	10	20
○ 5	10	20
Religion
○ Buddhist	3	6
○ Christian	15	30
○ Catholic	2	4
○ None	30	60

. Four themes delineated the experiences of nursing students as they managed their studies during and after the COVID-19 pandemic: (a) learning on their terms: the mandated shift in nursing study, (b) knowledge without touch: the perceived incompetence of the COVID-19 nursing cohort, (c) words left unsaid: the weight of insecurity, and (d) Beyond the perfect algorithm: the unrehearsed art of care.

3.1. Theme 1: Learning on Their Terms: The Mandated Shift in Healthcare

Participants shared that the pandemic caused major interruptions to their entire education, this included disruption to both their classroom studies and their hands-on clinical. Furthermore, nursing students shared a widespread feeling of powerlessness over their own education during this time of extraordinary change. With traditional campus instruction and clinical placements suddenly suspended, the curriculum had to undergo an immediate, compulsory relocation to digital platforms. This shift was not experienced as a collaborative adjustment but rather as a unilateral mandate, leaving participants feeling disempowered and voiceless in navigating the sudden and extreme alterations to their academic progression and professional development.

“The pandemic’s sudden suspension of my final clinical placement forced an involuntary transition to online learning. Stripped with educational autonomy, I was committed to a passive role. This underlined an intense tension, prioritizing immediate physical safety fundamentally compromised the hands-on experiential learning essential for actual nursing competency.”

(P06, Year 5 student)

“I felt that the pandemic significantly disrupted the sense of community I had developed within the nursing program. Our hands-on clinical training was abruptly replaced by remote learning, restricting us to our homes and Wi-Fi connections. Without student input regarding these changes, we had to adapt to a new educational format that diminished our engagement and motivation. Although this transition prioritized our safety, it was a challenging comprise that left us feeling disconnected from the clinical realities we were training to manage.”

(P16, Year 2 student)

Pandemic confinement erased some participants’ social life and stripped them of all freedom, leaving them feeling trapped and grieving the complete loss of their personal and educational choices.

“My world shortens to my room as the stay-at-home mandate erased my social life, TUNS (Temporary Undergraduate Nursing Student) work part-time in ward (public hospital), and all activities. Stripped with freedom and choice in my own learning, I felt completely trapped and stifled by the isolation and endless rules. It was a lonely, hollow existence where my entire life was dictated without my consent.”

(P19, Year 3 student)

3.2. Theme 2: Knowledge Without Touch: The Perceived Incompetence of the COVID-19

The initial lockdown phase precipitates an abrupt and total shift in their learning mode, compelling participants, and academic institutions alike to adapt to online learning. Institutional technical challenges characterized the transition, which notably replaced critical practical skill development with virtual simulations. Hong Kong’s restricted living conditions made studying even harder, forcing students to learn in distracting and often embarrassing home environments that simply were not built for education. A troubling consequence was that graduates often feel ill-equipped with the essential competencies required for effective practice, leading to widespread concerns regarding their readiness for the demands of the healthcare profession.

“The mandatory transition to remote learning made me feel as though I was attempting to learn clinical skills virtually rather than in a practical setting. Maintaining focus was difficult in aa shared living space, and I felt self-conscious using my camera due to background disruptions. Consequently, we forgot essential hands-on practice. As graduation approaches, I experience significant apprehension, my primary concern is whether I have adequately emerged the practical skills required for clinical practice.”

(P09, Year 2 student)

Participants in their final year articulated a deep sense of imposter syndrome, noting that the shift from clinical practice to virtual demonstrations deprived them of the essential procedural memory required for complex care. This anxiety was so acute that nursing students wished to delay graduation, viewing it not as a personal setback but as a necessary step to gain the practical competency required to ensure future patient safety.

“Approaching registration, I grapple with heartfelt imposter syndrome driven by a severe theory-practice gap. Substituting clinical hours with virtual simulations provided theoretical knowledge but reduced me of essential procedural memory. Consequently, the prospect of performing complex tasks on actual patients generates intense anxiety. I would willingly delay graduation to obtain this missing experiential learning. My primary fear is not academic failure but entering the workforce practically unprepared to bring the safe, competent care my future patients requisite.”

(P23, Year 5 student)

3.3. Theme 3: Words Left Unsaid: The Weight of Insecurity

This theme described the deterioration of healthcare students’ emotional and social abilities triggered by the forced relocation to online learning. The lack of face-to-face interaction with peers, teachers, and especially patients has left participants feeling significantly less confident in their ability to communicate effectively. Without direct, real-world clinical engagement, participants reported feeling professionally detached and indifferent, while also sensing a drop in their ability to be empathetic.

Consequently, even as participants mastered new technologies like virtual reality, the move away from traditional methods altered their development and weakened the necessary compassionate and relational skills necessary for future nursing professionals.

“I always believed nursing was about hands-on care and reassuring eye contact. Instead, my world shrank to a screen of muted icons and voices. We finished the program, but something vital was lost. Now, I struggle with hesitation and social awkwardness. My confidence is replaced by a quiet fear that when I finally face a suffering patient, I won’t know how to comfort them. I learned the science of nursing, but fear I’ve forgotten the art of human connection.”

(P25, Year 4 student)

“Every day, I feel like I’m playing a role. I passed my exams, but the ‘nurse’ I’m supposed to be feels like a stranger. Instead of building trust, I only learned to traverse Zoom. There’s a hollowness where real-world experience should be. I’m terrified others will see right through me—that I have the knowledge but not the instinct, the training but not the touch. I worry I’m just an echo of a nurse, not the real thing.”

(P33, Year 4 student)

In the post-COVID decade, some participants perceived rapid global change, driving a preference for greater independence and self-control. Reflecting a major change in interpersonal habits, they have transitioned from in-person interactions to relying on mobile devices and digital platforms for their daily communication and tasks.

“The environment changed rapidly, which felt immense. As a coping mechanism, I rely heavily on my smartphone to maintain aa sense of control. I prefer managing my daily activities and communicating with peers digitally, as it feels more manageable than face-to-face interactions. However, this approach is not applicable in the clinical setting. When a patient requires comfort, there is no digital interface to mediate the interaction, it requires an immediate, in-person connection that can be challenging to negotiate.”

(P45, Year 3 student)

3.4. Theme 4: Beyond the Perfect Algorithm: The Unrehearsed Art of Care

This theme delineates the complex attitudes of participants toward the increased use of simulation-based learning in the post-COVID era. While participants strongly welcome technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) and digital platforms as fresh, engaging, and effective learning tools, they also implicitly recognize that these simulations serve as a bridge to, rather than a replacement for, real-world clinical practice. The transition was received with considerable approval and eagerness across the board. Participants expressed feelings of happiness and excitement for these new learning perspectives, valuing the increased opportunities to practice skills in a controlled, low-risk environment. Perceiving these tools as a dynamic departure from standard theoretical training, they find the curriculum more engaging and refreshing.

“Virtual reality simulation significantly enhanced my psychomotor skill acquisition; repeated practice built my technical proficiency and confidence in catheterization. However, applying this skill clinically exposed the limitations of simulation-based learning. While VR prepared me technically, it bypassed the affective domain and relational competence required for holistic care. It could not simulate comforting an anxious patient or communicating with distressed family members. Ultimately, while technology successfully forget a competent technician, only real clinical application cultivates the interpersonal ability and empathy essential to becoming a fully realized nurse.”

(P34, Year 5 student)

“The simulation taught my hands to be perfect, steady, and sure. But it never taught my heart how to handle the weight of a patient’s gaze, full of fear and trust. The learning method builds my confidence, but the ward is where I learn how to be worthy of it.”

(P13, Year 3 student)

Despite high receptivity among participants toward new technologies for clinical skills practice, a challenge emerges in the form of diminished concentration after approximately 15 min of use. This decline in attention is frequently correlated with reports of physical discomfort, which participants attribute to factors such as the suboptimal ergonomic design of the head-mounted device and a mismatch between the device’s lens calibration and their individual visual focus. Notably, this difficulty in sustaining attention is not unique to simulated environments; participants reported comparable challenges in maintaining engagement during extended online theoretical lectures.

“Initially, I was engaged by the immersive potential of the VR training, which was effective for the first 15 min. However, the headset’s poor ergonomic fit soon caused visual tension and mild disorientation. My concentration significantly declined, like the attention fatigue I experienced during lengthy online lectures. The hardware finally became a barrier, shifting my focus from learning clinical skills to controlling physical discomfort. It was disappointing that the technology’s educational value was compromised by its user-centered limitations.”

(P46, Year 2 student)

“The weight of the headset caused physical discomfort that significantly impaired my concentration. Therefore, my attention shifted away from the clinical simulation and toward managing the physical strain caused by the device.”

(P04, Year 3 student)

4. Discussion

This inquiry interprets the impact of the educational paradigm shift from in-person to virtual instruction on nursing students in Hong Kong. Rather than experiencing this shift as a minimal logistical update, students described a force adaptation characterized by a great loss of agency. While academic institutions rapidly adopted digital alternatives to minimize learning loss and maintain safety, our findings release a significant tension between these institutional educational goals and the lived experiences of the students [3].

A central theme of this study was the students’ common sense of anxiety regarding their ‘practice readiness’ [35,36,37]. Even with expressing a strong professional commitment to joining the healthcare workforce during a global crisis, participants felt that limited hands-on training left them unprepared [38,39,40]. We explain this epistemological gap between virtual simulation and clinical reality through Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle [10,21,22,23,41,42]. Digital approaches successfully enabled Abstract Conceptualization, allowing students to catch theoretical knowledge, but they fundamentally deprived students of the Concrete Experience and Active Experimentation that occur in clinical settings [10,21,22,23,43,44,45,46,47]. Participants verbalized that technology, regardless of its sophistication, fails to show the physical reality of healthcare, particularly the touchable feedback (touch), auditory signals (sound), and fluid nature of patient communication [41,42,48,49]. Without these sensory inputs, online learning served as a theoretical stopgap that could not foster the self-efficacy and empathy required for holistic patient care [50,51].

Furthermore, the students’ fear of clinical incompetence can be deeply understood through the lens of Complexity Theory [21,22,23]. Real-world clinical settings are dynamic, complex adaptive systems characterized by unpredictability and fast-paced, irregular interactions. Direct online training and digital simulations often present controlled, straightforward scenarios that cannot replicate this complexity [10]. This limitation was uniquely intensified in the Hong Kong context. The region’s exceptionally strict “zero-COVID” policies, combined with the notably high-density and high-stress environment of local public hospitals, increased students’ feelings of detachment reported in Western studies [52,53]. Because they were isolated from the complex adaptive system of the hospital, their ability to negotiate unpredictable clinical realities deteriorated, leading to raised anxiety about their transition to registered nurses [36,37].

Beyond clinical skills, the sudden academic disruption and uncertainty regarding delayed graduation forced a complex psychological burden [36,37]. While some students found that online learning provided geographical flexibility and accommodated personal commitments, the comprehensive requirement to study from home worsened social isolation. Logistical and physiological barriers to digital tools, such as hardware scarcity and VR-induced ‘cybersickness,’ further hindered sustained engagement and added to student frustration [48,49].

Ultimately, this research establishes a broader framework for understanding and supporting the resilience of nursing students during public health emergencies. To address these deep disruptions, nursing educators must move beyond generic technological adaptations. Because virtual classes cannot fully repeat complex adaptive systems or offer real clinical experiences, curricula should strategically map online theory to rigorous, high-fidelity simulation boot learning environments. These boot learning environments can serve as a safe, practical bridge for clinical recovery before students re-enter the clinical settings. Furthermore, given the emotional toll of this disrupted learning, it is significant to balance academic demands with mental health support [54]. Integrating structured psychological debriefing, peer mentorship, and institutional flexibility regarding training schedules will offer students the confidence necessary to successfully negotiate their return to exhausting clinical realities [54].

Limitations

This study’s limitations include a small, general healthcare-focused sample, restricting generalizability to other nursing populations in Hong Kong. Findings may be affected by self-selection and social desirability biases. Methodologically, organizing online rather than face-to-face interviews potentially limits the observation of non-verbal cues. Furthermore, the results are highly context-dependent, reflecting the cultural specificity of Hong Kong and the acute temporal proximity to the COVID-19 pandemic, which may limit transferability to other settings. Finally, inherent to qualitative research, potential researcher influence on data interpretation must be acknowledged when assessing these findings.

5. Conclusions

This study explores nursing students’ lived experiences navigating educational disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants detailed their sudden shift to online learning and recognized resilience in adapting to virtual tools like AR, VR, and high-fidelity simulations. Findings disclose that students viewed these technologies as necessary, yet imperfect, aids that enabled their degree completion and transition into post-COVID careers. However, participants emphasized that virtual formats could not fully replicate hands-on relational care. Therefore, policymakers and educators should treat tech-based solutions as supplementary tools rather than absolute replacements. Future nursing education strategies must ensure training continuity while acknowledging that technology alone cannot substitute the experiential, hands-on learning essential for comprehensive clinical practice.