Abstract

Nurses have a fundamental responsibility of promoting good health and educating the patients they care for. This research explores nurses’ general knowledge about nutrition and whether the knowledge they have acquired is used in caring for their patients. The MEDLINE and the OVID database were searched for papers relating to the topic from 1990 to 2010 using “nurses and knowledge”, “nurses” “nurses and nutrition” at different times during the search. Additional searches used the CINAHL and EMBASE databases, which brought out results that facilitated the organization of the literature review. The inclusion criteria were studies that specify nutritional knowledge of nurses and the exclusion criteria were studies that investigated other nurse’s clinical knowledge. Fifteen studies that conform to the review criteria were identified. The results indicate that nurses have inadequate nutritional knowledge particularly in relation to when assessing the nutritional status of health care consumers.

Key words: Nurses, nutrition, knowledge.