Influence of Nurse Education on Healthy Lifestyle Habits of Students: A Literature Review

Objective: To determine if knowledge acquired during nursing career influence the health habits of students: drugs consumption, diet, exercise and sexual behavior. To identify areas for improvement in the curricula of nursing career, as well as the specific weaknesses presented by these students. Design: Literature review by searching primary documents of original researches on the subject through secondary sources, making a critical and thorough evaluation of such documents. Data sources: Original articles from four databases: PubMed/Medline, Spanish Medical Index, CINAHL and Scopus. Review methods: DeCS/MeSH "Students, Nursing", "Health Behavior" "Health Promotion", "Life Style", "Alcohol Drinking", "Smoking", "Unsafe Sex", "Drug Users", "Feeding Behavior", "Sedentary, Lifestyle" and "Risk-taking" were used, applying AND/OR boolean. Inclusion criteria established were: quantitative research in any design, participating nursing students, published in scientific journals from 2005 to 2015 in English, Spanish or Portuguese. Exclusion criteria: references outside the desired focus and repeated articles. Results: 21 references were included in the literature review. 85% of them (n=18) had a descriptive crosssectional design, 9.5% (n=2) a longitudinal observational design and 4.7% (n=1) a quasi-experimental design. 43% of articles (n=9) were focussed about substance abuse, 38% (n=8) about physical activity and healthy eating, 9.5% (n=2) about sexual behaviors of students, and another 9.5% (n=2) about the importance of knowledge on Health Promotion in the development of professional and personal lives. Conclusion: Nursing students have a better predisposition to improve their health habits than other non-medical qualifications students. They have healthier behaviours related to toxic intakes or sex relationships. The evolution and formation of students throughout nursing degree, in general, improve their health habits, although sometimes they could be damaged by factors such as academic overload. The implementation of education programs in the field of Health Promotion is deemed necessary for the university stage.