Strategies to attract school-leavers to nurse education programmes: an integrative literature review
Intended for healthcare professionals
Evidence and practice    

Strategies to attract school-leavers to nurse education programmes: an integrative literature review

Emily Clipstone Post-graduate student, School of Health Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, England
Leire Ambrosio Lecturer, School of Health Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, England

Why you should read this article:
  • To recognise the importance of increasing the uptake by school-leavers of undergraduate nurse education programmes

  • To learn about various types of strategies that have been used to attract school-leavers into nursing studies

  • To identify factors and barriers that should be considered when developing educational strategies to attract school-leavers

The shortfall of nurses in the UK has led to concerns that there are insufficient staff to ensure safe and high-quality care. To address this shortfall, one group to focus on for recruiting nursing students is school-leavers. This article reports on an integrative literature review that was conducted to explore the educational strategies used to attract school-leavers to undergraduate nurse education programmes. The review identified that a variety of educational strategies were used, and all of the included studies reported positive effects on school pupils’ intention to undertake nursing studies. These strategies often included interactions with nursing staff and/or nursing students, as well as observing and practising clinical skills, for example via simulation. However, most participants likely had a pre-existing interest in healthcare or nursing, the interventions were delivered predominantly to young women, and the included studies lacked longer-term follow-up. This highlights a need to conduct further research to assess the longitudinal impact of recruitment strategies aimed at broader audiences.

Nursing Management. doi: 10.7748/nm.2024.e2123

Peer review

This article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software

Correspondence

ec2e22@soton.ac.uk

Conflict of interest

None declared

Clipstone E, Ambrosio L (2024) Strategies to attract school-leavers to nurse education programmes: an integrative literature review. Nursing Management. doi: 10.7748/nm.2024.e2123

Published online: 29 April 2024

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