The Virtual Education of Health Care Providers in the Corona Epidemic Period, Point of View, Challenges and Approaches

Introduction: The Covid-19 pandemic was the biggest challenge that caused educational systems in the world to deal with it. Universities of medical sciences directed students away from the clinical environment and they lead them to virtual education. This sudden transition was accompanied by many challenges especially in clinical fields such as nursing. Methods and Materials: This review article has been performed based on Persian and English articles using virtual education, electronic education, Online education, Covid-19, nursing and other related keywords in SID, Magiran and Google Scholar, Scopus, Science Direct, PubMed, and Proquest databases during the years of 2011 to 2020. Results: Point of view, advantages, limitations and existing solutions on the way of virtual education were considered in this article. Its advantages include learning flexibility and a suitable teaching-learning platform. Moreover, some challenges of virtual education were categorized in three categories of virtual education infrastructure, virtual education and evaluation process, ethics and information security. The existing solutions, that were examined, were also in the field of education and structure. Discussion and Conclusion: Preparation in different dimensions of the educational system requires careful planning. Now is the right time to turn the current threatening situation into an opportunity by strengthening the necessary structures and technologies, modifying the educational processes and evaluation, training the professors and students. In addition, a big step towards the development of educational systems and its integration with the virtual education system should be taking.