Learning styles and academic outcome among nursing students-systematic review

Background: Learning is a dynamic process and changes from person to person. Present day learners, in healthcare sector need to be competent to gain the quick access to the knowledge and skills in the technologically advancing world. Method: The purpose of this systematic review was to find the learning styles adapted by nursing students and its relationship with academic outcome. A comprehensive literature search was done between November and December 2016, using the MeSH words and key words such as learning, learning styles, learning approaches, academic success, academic results, academic achievements, students, learner, nursing students and Boolean operators from four online data bases such as PubMed, Ovid Medline, Proquest and CINAHL for the articles published between 2005 and 2016. A narrative synthesis approach of analysis was adopted for summarizing the findings. Results: Total of 1,840 articles were identified. After quality appraisal and based on the inclusion criteria, six research articles were found relevant for data extraction for the review. Out of these, three studies were exclusively conducted among nursing students, and five different types of learning style assessment tools were used among these six studies. Academic achievement was mainly assessed through academic marks and academic grade points. Conclusion: Learning style is unique for each learner. Teachers should understand learning style of student to encourage the new ways of learning to improve the learning outcome.