Microbiology in Nursing Students Curricula: Significance, Education, Constraints and Perspectives

Abstract

Microbiology is an essential discipline for healthcare professionals. Indeed, they practice in environments at high risk of healthcare-associated infections, antimicrobial resistance and the emergence of new diseases. This discipline allows nurses to be well equipped for the practice of nursing care, to contextualizeadequately their knowledge and competencies in multiple care situations. The purpose of this study is to highlight the importance of microbiology in nursing education and practice.

To carry out this review, wequestioned:Pubmed, web of science, Scopus and Google scholardatabases to select the articles. Only thoseavailable from 1990 to 2019with full text and related study interest are studied.Thirteen relevant articles were selected.  The themes emerged from this process review article are: theimportance of microbiology study incurrent nursing practice and nursing student program, the constraints and recommendations education.

This review shows the undeniable role of microbiology in nursing practice, particularly infection control. It is suggested to promote the microbiology education based on significant clinical tasks nursingand  adopt active learning methods.  Further studies should be conducted to assess the level of microbiology application knowledge in clinical practiceamong nursing students.