**5. Conclusions**

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic created the need to reinvent strategies and readjust teaching, learning, and assessment processes in nursing education, namely in a clinical context. This scoping review identified twelve primary studies about changes in clinical training for nursing students during the COVID-19 pandemic published between 2020 and 2022. This mapping shows that the pandemic made it challenging for nursing schools to adapt their curricula to allow students to continue their practice and advance at their graduation level.

In this sense, nursing schools tried to replace traditional clinical training with several activities based on simulation or virtual activities. However, contact with others is essential, and simulation programs or scenarios cannot provide it. Simulation is essential for skill development, however, developing technical and non-technical skills simultaneously requires direct contact with patients.

More studies should be carried out within the scope of the long-term consequences of adopting these methodologies in nursing practice.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization: C.L., A.C., R.G., V.P., H.N., and J.P.S.; Validation: V.P. and H.N.; Writing—initial draft preparation: C.L., A.C., R.G., V.P., H.N., and J.P.S.; Writing—review and editing: C.L., A.C., R.G., V.P., H.N., and J.P.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors wish to acknowledge the Health Sciences Research Unit: Nursing, Nursing School of Coimbra, Portugal and the Portugal Centre for Evidence-Based Practice: a Joanna Briggs Institute Centre of Excellence, Portugal.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


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