European nursing students' academic success or failure: a post-Bologna Declaration systematic review

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of this systematic review is to synthesise the available evidence in the European scientific literature produced after the Bologna Declaration and to evaluate studies that quantify and examine the factors associated with the academic success or failure of nursing students.

Design: A systematic review of the literature was conducted.

Data sources: Major health literature databases were searched for studies published from 2000 to 2011.

Review methods: This review includes only European observational studies that were submitted to a quality assessment by two researchers before inclusion.

Results: Only five studies were included in this review. There are discordant results regarding the predictors of success or failure, which were common objects of study (gender, age, qualification on entry, ethnic group). other factors were studied individually (student personality, gendered view of nursing careers, intention to leave, family commitments, working while on course, student performance, clinical learning environment) need to be confirmed in additional studies. Although the predictors may be relevant at the local level, given their low external validity and the conflicting results, it is not possible to state with certainty that these factors are effectively predictive of success or failure in the context of post-Bologna Declaration Europe.

Conclusions: This review showed that over the last ten years, in the European context, only a few high-quality observational studies have been performed. In this regard, given the small number and heterogeneity of the available studies, there is little useful evidence available for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to effectively address the problem. In the future, European researchers should focus not only on the documentation of the predictors but also on the documentation of the outcomes produced by the HEI strategies that have been implemented to prevent avoidable academic failure and contain physiological academic failure.