A systematic review of nursing students' knowledge and related factors towards pressure ulcer prevention

Abstract

The present systematic review was conducted to investigate the nursing students' knowledge and related factors towards pressure ulcer (PU) prevention. A comprehensive, systematic search was performed in different international electronic databases, such as Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, and Persian electronic databases such as Iranmedex, and Scientific Information Database using keywords extracted from Medical Subject Headings such as "Knowledge", "Pressure ulcer", and "Nursing student" from the earliest to the February 1, 2023. The quality assessment of the present studies in this systematic review was based on the appraisal tool for cross-sectional studies (AXIS tool). In general, a total of 7,375 nursing students participated in 14 studies. The average knowledge score of nursing students about the prevention of PUs was 47.60 out of 100. There was a significant positive relationship between knowledge and the factors such as attitude, age, the number of clinical units, and self-assessment of knowledge. There was also a significant relationship between the knowledge of nursing students and factors such as years of education, the number of clinical units, clinical experience, age, experience in caring for PUs, sex, specialization, level of education, attitude. Overall, the level of knowledge of nursing students about the prevention of PUs was at a moderate level. Therefore, healthcare managers and policymakers might improve nursing students' knowledge by introducing training programs on the prevention of PUs into nursing students' curricula.