Nutrition education for nursing students: A scoping review

Introduction: Nutritional care has long been recognized as a vital component of nursing. However, nutrition instruction faces many challenges in nursing education, and few studies have investigated this topic. Aim: The study’s aim was to investigate how nutrition education has been conducted in undergraduate nursing education. Method: A scoping review was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) and Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) recommendations. The search was conducted in April 2023, with an updated search in February 2024. We searched in the following EBSCO databases: Academic Search Elite, CINAHL, Education Source and ERIC. We also searched in PubMed and Embase via Ovid and Scopus. A total of 3634 articles were identified from the initial search. Duplicates were removed and articles were then screened by title, abstract and full text by the research team to ensure eligibility. We identified 30 articles for retrieval. Nine articles were ultimately included. Results: The results were organized into five thematic groups: (a) learning through involving patients, (b) learning contextualized in clinical practice, (c) learning through an active teaching method on campus, (d) learning through interdisciplinary collaboration and (e) combining education on campus and learning in clinical placement. Conclusion: The findings from the scoping review emphasized that nutrition education activities should utilize active, experiential and social learning strategies. Moreover, findings suggest the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration when conducting nutrition education. Nursing education must give due attention to nutrition education, both on campus and in clinical placement, to adequately prepare students for nutritional care in professional practice. Nutrition instruction in nursing education could benefit from addressing nutritional care at both an individual and a systemic level, to support nursing students to cope with various challenges related to nutritional care in the patient setting.