Describing Zoom exhaustion and fatigue in nursing students at a university in South Africa

Online platforms have gained considerable support from students and lecturers post COVID-19, however they are associated with student exhaustion and fatigue.

To determine Zoom exhaustion and fatigue in nursing students at a selected university in South Africa.

A quantitative cross - sectional study was conducted in KwaZulu-Natal to collect data from 146 nursing students registered at the selected university for the 4-year Bachelor of Nursing programme. The Zoom Exhaustion and Fatigue Scale collected data on responses to domains of general fatigue, visual fatigue, social fatigue, motivational fatigue, and emotional fatigue. The data were analysed using the International Business Machines, Statistical Package for Social Sciences, version 26.0. Descriptive statistics were calculated for demographics, a total score was calculated and mean scores and 95% confidence intervals for the different domains were calculated. Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis Independent Tests were calculated to determine associations between demographics and Zoom usage.

The overall Zoom exhaustion and fatigue score was 46.71 (s.d. = 10.50). The motivational fatigue construct had the highest mean score of 3.29 (s.d. = 0.83), followed by general (3.18 s.d. = 0.81), social (3.11, s.d. = 0.88), emotional (3.06, s.d. = 0.99) and visual fatigue (2.92, s.d. = 0.94).

The study concluded that while the overall mean score indicated moderate levels of Zoom exhaustion and fatigue among respondents, majority of the respondents scored high levels (> 48) of Zoom fatigue. Students reported higher levels of motivational fatigue compared to the other 4 constructs.