Self-Esteem Challenges of Nursing Students: An Integrative Review

Leila Valizadeh, Vahid Zamanzadeh, Rahim Badri Gargari, Akram Ghahramanian, Faranak Jabbarzadeh Tabrizi, Brian Keogh
2016 Research and Development in Medical Education  
Self-esteem among nursing students is important in providing high-quality service to clients, yet each study in this field has described only a portion of existing relevant knowledge. Integrative review studies are the best practice for identification of existing nursing knowledge. The purpose of this study was to determine self-esteem challenges among nursing students. Methods: An integrative review was conducted in this study. The databases ProQuest, Medline on PubMed, Science Direct, Google
more » ... cholar and IranMedex were used for the review. The articles were retrieved in three steps, including searching by search terms, reviewing the proceedings based on inclusion criteria and final retrieval and assessment of the available full texts. We used a list of keywords, including nursing, self-esteem and challenges and mixed them with "AND" and "OR" as a search strategy. Papers were included and eligible if they were associated with problems related to nursing students' self-esteem. Those studies that focused only on the self-esteem of registered nurses or patients were excluded. Search results were limited to the years 1960-2014. Results: Our findings showed three major challenges, including challenges associated with inconsistency in determining the level of students' self-esteem, self-esteem associated challenges in professionalism of students, and the psychosocial challenges pertaining to the consequences of low self-esteem. Conclusion: The findings suggest there is a need for more qualitative research to explore the factors that contribute to self-esteem in nursing students with a particular focus on the factors that increase or decrease self-esteem. In addition, strategies to maintain and increase self-esteem need to be designed, implemented and evaluated. Article info Valizadeh et al Res Dev Med Educ, 2016, 5(1), 5-11 6
doi:10.15171/rdme.2016.003 fatcat:6qrpqwb5z5artpfbx66t4msmm4