Exploring nurses’ knowledge and attitudes about children who are overweight/obese: A review of the literature

Abstract

The study reviewed the published research on nurses’ knowledge and attitudes about children who are overweight/obese. A literature search of research published in English between 2000 and 2016 was conducted in CINAHL, MEDLINE, Scopus and Google Scholar. A total of 5 papers met the inclusion criteria for this review with only one paper specifically discussing the attitudes of student nurses to childhood overweight/obesity. This review has shown that although there are very few articles on nurses’ knowledge and attitudes to overweight/obese children, the papers included in the review demonstrate that nurses were generally lacking in knowledge about this issue.