Changes in Study Approaches, Self-efficacy, and Mental Health in Allied Healthcare Students during the COVID-19 Crisis

Healthcare Students’ Approaches to Studying in Association With Self-Efficacy and Mental Health: Repeated Cross-Sectional Analysis

“…Some effort has been aimed at enhancing deep approaches, as it is asserted that it may stimulate a lifelong learning mindset (Asikainen & Gijbels, 2017) and has been associated with academic success (Gasevic et al, 2017). DaLomba et al (2022) found that students decreased their use of strategic approaches during the COVID-19 pandemic, becoming more reflective about their learning, but no longer-term information was reported in that study. In their systematic review of 43 ATL studies, Asikainen and Gijbels (2017) found no conclusive evidence that student approaches to learning develop or change over time.…”

“…Unexpectedly, instruction had converted to a predominantly virtual format at this time, the impacts of which could not be explored fully in this study. This was, however, explored at length in a separate analysis of the data (DaLomba et al, 2022). It may be important to explore whether those who engage in surface learning, have poorer mental health, and have lower self-efficacy complete their programs and/or pass national board exams at different rates than those who adopt strategic and deep approaches.…”

“…Perhaps not unexpectedly, there has been a significant rise in overall graduate student mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression (Allen et al, 2020;Evans et al, 2018). The recent worldwide public health crisis of COVID-19 appears to have compounded student mental health issues as well as impacted their sense of self-efficacy and the ways they approach studying (Browning et al, 2021;DaLomba et al, 2022;Li et al, 2020).…”

“…OT and PT students showed a decrease in strategic approaches to learning with a large effect size from their first to second years of graduate study, suggesting that students experiencing crises might need tailored support to organize their studying (DaLomba et al, 2022). Collectively, these issues present a clear need to identify and explore factors that influence student approaches to studying, self-efficacy, and mental health factors in graduate allied healthcare programs and how these may change over time.…”

Mental health and wellbeing of further and higher education students returning to face-to-face learning after Covid-19 restrictions

“…In line with the extant literature, increased self-efficacy was associated with improved mental health and wellbeing [ 16 ]. However, some evidence from the first year of the pandemic suggested that although allied health students’ self-efficacy increased over time, their mental health did not improve [ 15 ]. Based on that finding, it is possible that allied health students may have experienced even more challenges than other programmes.…”