COVID-19 outbreak has undoubtedly affected the lives of millions, and there are several important lessons that healthcare professionals and healthcare educators can learn from this pandemic. Most importantly, it highlighted the fact that despite the medical advancements that were made over the years, the United States is not well-equipped to address a serious health crisis. It is possible, however, that through education and the use of this experience with COVID-19, some changes will be made to the way healthcare is perceived.
Personal Reflection
Firstly, it is necessary to point out the severe problems that nursing professionals experienced as a result of the pandemic in the inability of hospitals to provide protective equipment to employees who work with COVID-19 patients. This is one of the essentials that every medical professional should have access to, yet Chiu (2020) highlights the protests and lawsuits filed by nurses because of the inability to have protection, and Stockman and Baker (2020) report that nurses have to “beg for protective gear and better planning” (para. 1). Apart from safety concerns, it is unethical to force people to work in dangerous conditions, knowingly subjecting them and their families to the danger of being infected.
Apart from that, very little research exists on the topic of protective gear, such as masks, making it difficult for people to make at-home masks that would be effective for protecting themselves and others. Although CDC does provide some recommendations and standards of medical masks, it also highlights the need not to buy protective masks for the general population to make them available to medical professionals (Koehler & Rule, 2020). However, little advice is given to individuals who will follow the advice but still want to have protection – such as a design and materials that can be used to create an effective at-home mask is not provided. Therefore, the pandemic also offers an opportunity of addressing a severe gap in medical research and the need to create ways for the general population to take care of their health while not adversely affecting the availability of masks.
The crisis is the result of improper planning since such an occurrence as a global pandemic is not usually a concern for hospital management and policymakers. It is possible that educational institutions will pay more attention to preparing future healthcare employees and policymakers to fighting the unlikely but dangerous events such as COVID-19. Additionally, the general population will know more about personal hygiene and ways to protect themselves from the virus, which will help address other health concerns as well. Therefore, although COVID-19 is a serious matter that the states globally were unprepared to address, it has a positive impact on education both on the institutional and personal levels.
Educational Applications
Educational applications provide an opportunity to access knowledge in a convenient manner and to quickly disseminate new findings to different populations, which prove to be essential during the times of the pandemic. Education philosophy is focused on “the nature and aims of education and the philosophical problems arising from educational theory and practice” (“Philosophy of education, 2018, para. 1). COVID-19 is an opportunity for the medical community to learn from the mistakes that were made, and that resulted in a need to shut down entire states, affecting the economy and personal lives of people adversely.
Educational applications can help promote the health of individuals and families by giving them access to verified information about the virus and ways to protect themselves. During the first weeks of the pandemic, a lot of misinformation was spread by the media regarding the virus and how it spreads, which lead to certain superstitions. Moreover, as was discussed, individuals and families do not receive information about the protective equipment they can buy or make from the authorities, which can also be addressed through educational applications.
Students are a population that is seriously affected by the virus because their studies had to be postponed or transformed into online lectures due to COVID-19. Here, educational applications can help by using the situation to create new practices and opportunities, adding to the theoretical knowledge. Health professionals can learn fro these events by looking at the gaps in research and practice, many of which were discussed in the previous section, and addressing them by using evidence to improve their work or conducting more research. Higher government authorities should and other institutions and individuals, based on the philosophy of education principles, should use this practical situation and design policies and regulations, including those concerning medical education and the education of the general public to address the insufficiencies, such as unavailability of resources. Therefore, all individuals and institutions can use the pandemic as a lesson that teaches them about personal hygiene and protection from contamination and the issues within the healthcare system of the State.
Conclusion
To sum up, the educational philosophy is concerned with the nature and scope of education, and in the case of COVID-19, its principles can be used to make conclusions about the existing issues and transform what is taught to the general public and medical professionals. For example, lack of research and protection gear highlights a gap that needs to be addressed by changing the education practices. The population can use education applications to learn more about the virus and ways of protecting themselves from it.
References
- Chiu, A. (2020). ‘We’re beyond angered’: Fed-up nurses file lawsuits, plan protest at White House over lack of coronavirus protections. The Washington Post. Web.
- Koehler, K. & Rule, A. (2020). Can a mask protect me? Putting homemade masks in the hierarchy of controls. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School Of Public Health. Web.
- Philosophy of education. (2018). Web.
- Stockman, F. & Baler, M. (2020). Nurses battling coronavirus beg for protective gear and better planning. Web.