Nursing students' knowledge of occupational exposure

Abstract

Nursing students experience occupational exposure while transitioning from student to professional and at the beginning of developing their nursing identity. Nursing students develop their understanding of occupa tional exposure through college education. Psychosocial hazards are the most frequently reported occupa tional risks among nursing and midwifery students. However, many students demonstrate limited knowledge of workplace hazards. The aim of this literature review was to explore the knowledge of occupational exposure for nursing stu dents. The purpose of this study is to find information, which could be used to enhance the occupational protection of nursing students in practice or internships and offer valuable insights to enhance nursing stu dents' ability to manage such risks effectively. Research was conducted as a literature review where a search from Cinahl debates and handsearching to find suitable articles. The literature search yielded a total of twelve articles. Nine articles were retrieved from the selected databases. The remaining three articles were identified through manual searching. All articles met the predetermined inclusion criteria for this review. The research team analyzed the selected articles using inductive content analysis. Extracted key information from each study and grouped these pat terns into main themes and supporting sub-themes. This literature review found that nursing students will face occupational exposure in infections, hazardous chemicals, radiation and risk factor. nursing students faced bloodborne infections, airborne infections and contact infections as occupational infections; chemotherapy medication, anesthic gases, surgical smoke, and cleaning and disinfection agents as hazardous chemicals exposure; X-ray exposure, interventional radi ology exposure, and radiation therapy exposure as radiation exposure; nosie pollution, emotional violence and physical injury as risks in the work environment. As the findings of this literature review show, nursing students entering their careers in the nursing field face different aspects of occupational exposure. Training, enhancing knowledge, and creating a safe healthcare environment are recommended to reducing occupational expo-sure of student nurses.