How SMC’s Nursing Program Has Transformed During a Global Pandemic

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, Santa Monica College (SMC) nursing students find themselves in a hybrid nursing program, with their classes online and their clinical rotations and skills labs in-person.

Before COVID-19 unexpectedly halted the world, the nursing program was, and still is, a rigorous and demanding program that acts as path to licensure.

Early this year, the SMC nursing program shut down all in-person classes and activities, which included clinical rotations performed twice a week in a hospital and one weekly 12-hour skills lab to minimize in-person contact for the safety of all students and faculty. However, nursing students now find themselves having classes several days a week via Zoom for the remainder of the year. Clinical rotations and skills labs were resumed in person at the beginning of the Fall 2020 term.

Clinical rotations are being resumed in-person because nursing students must have a set amount of hours of hands-on training in order to complete their practicum requirements. Clinical rotations at Harbor UCLA Medical Center in Torrance occur twice a week, and twelve hour skills labs take place on the Santa Monica Bundy Campus once a week -- with strict guidelines and protocols in place.

SMC is currently only allowing programs to conduct any procedures in-person if they are training students to enter the essential workforce. The nursing program is one of only two programs offered at SMC that are allowed to participate in this hybrid system, along with students preparing to be respiratory therapists.

Nursing students and instructors are following all CDC guidelines to ensure the safety and well-being of all involved parties.

Aspen Brito, a second year nursing student at SMC, confirmed that upon entering the hospital for clinical rotations or the Bundy campus for their weekly skills labs, everyone’s temperature must be checked.

All students and instructors must have a temperature below 100.4 degrees, per CDC guidelines; otherwise, they will be sent home and must be seen by their primary care physician as soon as possible to be screened for COVID-19.

If any student or instructor test positives for the virus, they will automatically be prohibited from returning for at least 14 days. Every student and instructor must wear face masks while completing skills labs, and must wear protective face shields during clinical rotations. Once students and instructors are in the building, they must maintain social distancing guidelines and practice proper hand washing at all times.

Thus far, no students or instructors in SMC's nursing program have shown symptoms or tested positive for COVID-19.

Upon being asked how she felt about resuming in-person activities, Brito said “I was really excited because that meant that my class and I were able to graduate on time and resume our typical schedule.”

For the time being, nursing students are prohibited from meeting before or after skills labs or clinical rotations in an effort to keep non-essential in-person activities to a minimum.

Even with all these protocols and guidelines in place, when Brito’s class was able to resume in person activities, she still had anxiety about being in the hospital, but with every shift, her confidence grew.

During any given semester, approximately 40 students are accepted into the nursing program each Fall and Spring semester. Due to COVID-19, SMC's nursing program was not able to take any new applicants for the Fall 2020 term.

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