Students’ Perceptions of Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication Behaviors during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cultural Perspectives, Feelings and Coping Behaviors during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study of Romanian Students

Socio-cultural patterns and communication styles differ from culture to culture. As such, the way in which people deal with a crisis situation is also culture-dependent. The COVID-19 pandemic has pointed, once more, to the cultural diversity of the world through a variety of reactions to the measures imposed by the global spread of the deadly virus. The present research aims at identifying the feelings, coping behaviors and communication patterns of the younger Romanian generation during the COVID-19 pandemic and at explaining them from a cultural standpoint, in an effort to raise awareness of the cultural (un)predictability of human reactions to certain external stimuli. The survey conducted online on 409 students at Politehnica University of Timișoara (Romania) revealed that most of students' socio-cultural behavior could have been anticipated by the Romanian authorities when they decided a certain pandemic action plan, and that the few unexpected results indicate the versatility of a culture that is still changing under the Western European influence caused by the fact that Romania has adhered to European Union principles for more than fifteen years.

Towards describing the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on clinical radiography education: A systematic review

Introduction

The sudden onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant and rapid changes to the traditional ways of providing radiography education, including adaptations to teaching and learning styles as well as disruptions to students’ clinical placement. This review explored the impact of the pandemic on clinical radiography education globally.

Methods

A systematic literature search was conducted on relevant databases, including PubMed, Science Direct, CINAHL (Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and SCOPUS. All relevant articles were critically appraised for quality and subjected to information extraction and results-based convergent synthesis.

Results

A total of 17 articles met the inclusion and exclusion criteria for this review. The key findings are themed around challenges and benefits with the introduction of new teaching and learning approaches and resilience exhibited by students during the pandemic to overcome: inadequate support and mentorship while transitioning to fully qualified professionals, challenges with PPE usage, and impact on personal and academic life.

Conclusions

Globally, radiography students experienced several challenges, especially during the initial acute phase of the pandemic. The pandemic-related challenges identified in this review could negatively influence the radiography student attrition rates, consequently worsening the existing radiography workforce shortage. Thus, urgent institutional level support systems and interventions would be necessary to mitigate the pandemic impact and improve the students' learning experience.