Impact of COVID-19 on University Department of Respiratory Therapy Enrollment Rates: A Nationwide Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background: Analyze COVID-19 impact on respiratory therapy student registrations to guide education policies for respiratory therapy professionals in Taiwan. In order to understand whether the COVID-19 epidemic will have an impact on the registration rate of new students in the Department of Respiratory Therapy of four universities (three in the north of Taiwan and one in the south of Taiwan) in Taiwan, we will for the 3 academic years (2017-2019) is defined as before the epidemic, and (2020-2022) is defined as during the epidemic for comparison.

Methods: We collected the 2017-2022 registration rates of the Department of Respiratory Therapy of the four universities (TMU, FJU, CGU, and KMU) announced by the Taiwan Ministry of Education and defined 2017-2019 as before the COVID-19 epidemic, and 2020-2022 as during the epidemic, we used Student's t-test and Mann-Whitney U test for statistical analysis. This study has been approved by the Clinical Trials/Human Research Board (IRB) of the Research Ethics Committee of China Medical University Hospital (CMUH111-REC-008). This study was grants supported by the China Medical University Hospital (grant numbers CMUH- EDU11112).

Results: According to the query results, the registration rates of the four universities before the epidemic (2017-2019) were (TMU: 88.89%, 91.11%, 89.13%; FJU: 94.44%, 90%, 92.5%; CGU: 88.37%, 86.05% , 95.35 %; KMU: 82%, 90%, 88%), the registration rates during the epidemic (2020-2022) were (TMU: 91.49%, 90%, 95.65%; FJU: 90.24%, 100%, 100 % ; CGU: 100%, 90.70%, 97.73%; KMU: 78.43%, 88.46%, 92%). We separately conducted a comparative analysis of the registration rates of the four universities before the epidemic and during the epidemic, and the P values were TMU: .11, FJU: .14, CGU: .10, KMU: .47, which were not statistically significant (P values > .05). We then used the Mann-Whitney U test for statistical analysis on the four universities, and the P value was .06, which was not statistically significant (P value > .05).

Conclusions: Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, high school graduates in Taiwan still prefer the stable job market of respiratory therapy.

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