Fostering caring in undergraduate nursing students: An integrative review

Abstract

Background: Assuring undergraduate nursing students are caring and compassionate is an important goal of nursing education programs.  Some research has been conducted to examine interventions to enhance nursing students’ levels of caring.

Methods: We conducted an integrative review of caring research and found fifteen articles reporting educational interventions designed to enhance caring among undergraduate pre-licensure nursing students. We reviewed each for how caring was taught and the student outcomes.

Results: Our analysis indicates that caring can be taught to nursing students. Effective educational interventions included engaging students in authentic conditions that required them to provide care, reflection on the care they provided, and faculty members role modeling caring behaviors.

Conclusions: Implications for nursing educators is that their curricular and instructional approaches are critical to enhancing nursing students’ levels of caring.