Nurse Education in Practice 48 (2020) 102886 Available online 15 September 2020 1471-5953/© 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Review Nursing process education: A review of methods and characteristics Elham Sadat Mousavinasab, Ph.D. a , Sharareh Rostam Niakan Kalhori, Ph.D. b , Nahid Zarifsanaiey, Ph.D. c , Mahnaz Rakhshan, Ph.D. d , Marjan Ghazisaeedi, Ph.D. b, * a Kashan University of Medical Sciences and Health Services, Iran b The School of Allied Sciences, Health Information Management Department, Enghelab Ave, Ghods Ave, Farredanesh Alley, No #17, Tehran, Iran c Virtual School, Center of Excellence for e-Learning in Medical Sciences, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Zand Street Neshat Ave, Center of Excellence for e- Learning in Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran d School of Nursing and Midwifery, Zand Ave, Namazi square, Shiraz, Iran A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Nursing process Education Care planning Training ABSTRACT The concepts of the nursing process have been assigned as important plans for the curricula and continuing education programs in the nursing discipline. This paper focuses on the main characteristics of the educational methods applied in training programs in the nursing process or nursing care plan. The original studies were extracted from the PubMed, ProQuest, Scopus, Science Direct and, Web of Science databases, following two-step screening by two reviewers. Accordingly, 21 papers were included in the study based on inclusion criteria. According to the results, 42.85% of educational methods were computer-based while 57.15% were non-computer based. Computers were used as the main educator (14.28%) or as an assisted-tool (25.57%). The lecture-based training, as one of the non-computer based educational tools, was the most frequent method observed across the studies (33.3%). There are two frequently used measures of evaluating the educational programs learner’s knowledge of nursing process (28.75%) and their attitude toward the program (23.80%). The results suggested that in order to improve educational methods for the nursing process, computers, mobile phones, and other available technologies should be integrated with the traditional educational methods. Also, comprehensive measures should be applied for evaluating them. 1. Introduction The theory of nursing process was frst introduced in 1958 (Schmieding, 1993), and has been integrated with the nursing care plan since the early 1960s (Johnson et al., 2011). From this time, the in- stitutions of higher education at US, have commenced teaching the nursing process, but there is limited evidence of applying it in the hos- pitals in a practical way in the 1960s. One decade later the nursing process had been used in hospitals in US. In the UK the nursing process borrowed from the US in the 1970s and then disseminated (De La Cuesta, 1983). Based on the nursing process, nurses describe or hypothesize the patient’s actual and potential problems, health risks, and promoting opportunities (Heardman and Kamitsuru, 2014). The nurses recognize their role in the planning of the care by understanding the nursing process, thereby making the care more relevant (Stonehouse, 2017). This process now functions as the main framework of the nursing care plans in developed countries (Mahmoud and Bayoumy, 2014). This cyclic model consists of four major steps: assessment, planning, intervention, and evaluation (Ballantyne, 2016). The model has subse- quently been modifed to fve steps by adding the diagnosis by ANA (American Nursing Association), immediately followed by the assess- ment (Heardman and Kamitsuru, 2014; Johnson et al., 2011). In the assessment phase, the nurse collects comprehensive data from the pa- tient, family, group or community. Then, the nurse converts the collected data into information in order to create structured knowledge which is known as the nursing diagnosis. At the end of this step, the identifed actual and potential problems of the patient are judged by the nurse. The NANDA-based (the North American Nursing Diagnosis As- sociation) taxonomy as the main international nursing terminology is used for classifying these identifed problems (Heardman and Kamit- suru, 2014). In the planning phase, based on the priorities of patient’s problems, short and long goals are set. Then, the expected outcomes will be defned to evaluate the effect of nursing interventions. The nursing * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: mousavinasabelhamoffcial@gmail.com (E.S. Mousavinasab), niakan2@gmail.com (S. Rostam Niakan Kalhori), nzarifsanaee@gmail.com (N. Zarifsanaiey), rakhshanm@sums.ac.ir (M. Rakhshan), ghazimar@tums.ac.ir (M. Ghazisaeedi). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Nurse Education in Practice journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/issn/14715953 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2020.102886 Received 28 October 2018; Received in revised form 26 February 2020; Accepted 11 September 2020