Effectiveness of Teaching Evidence-Based Nursing to Undergraduate Nursing Students in Iran: A Systematic Review

Background: Evidence-based nursing (EBN) is an approach to make effective clinical decisions based upon personal clinical expertise and patient preferences and values in combination with the most current and relevant research and evidence available on the topic. This approach uses the evidence-based practice (EBP) as a foundation. In spite of extensive training in EBN for nursing students in Iran, appropriate articles have not been summarized suitably as to EBN’s effectiveness. The present study aimed to systematically review the effectiveness of EBN education on the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of nursing students in Iran.

Methods: For a systematic review on the topic, different searching methods were applied by searching on the following key words: training, learning, evidence-based nursing, nursing education in B.A. course, nursing students, workshop, knowledge, attitudes, skills, Iran. Their English equivalents were included. Databases that were searched included SID, Magiran, Medlib, Iranmedex, PubMed, Google Scholar, and CINAHL. We included studies that had recruited undergraduate nursing students, articles that had the key words in the titles, all studies conducted in Persian and English up to 2016, and the studies which used at least one educational intervention for evidence-based teaching.

Results: Based on the results of automated and manual database searches of over 313 papers,143 articles were eliminated by studying their titles based on not reporting teaching EBM to undergraduate nursing students, and 160 articles were removed based on content. In all, eight articles were related to the topic of the present study, indicating that EBN education promotes knowledge, attitudes, and skills of nursing students.

Conclusion: This study found that EBN educational methods can promote knowledge, attitude sand skills in undergraduate nursing students, but the review does not reach a conclusion as to the advisability of one strategy.