Occupational and professional identity of nursing students in China:a systematic review and Meta-analysis
Objective To systematically evaluate the level of occupational and professional identity of nursing students in China in or-der to provide reference for nursing education practice.Methods System search of relevant domestic and foreign databases and the medRxiv preprint server were searched.The retrieval time was from May 2020 to July 22,2023.STATA 17 was used to analyze the literature after two researchcers independently screened and evaluated the literature quality.Results A total of 24 articles and 14,790 nursing students in post-epidemic China were included.The standard pooled result of occupational identity was[72.04,95%CI(68.53,75.55),P<0.001].Stages of study,sampling methods,and survey times in the occupational identity scores showed statistically significant differences.There were no signifi-cant differences in academic levels.Meta-regression showed that the sample size,sampling methods,survey time,and academic level explained 73.85%of the heterogeneity in nursing students occupational identity scores.Only four studies focused on professional identity,the pooled re-sult was[66.05,95%CI(57.08,75.01),P<0.001].Conclusion The occupational and professional identity of nursing students in China showed moderate levels.Study design,survey time,educational level and stage of nursing students are factors of heterogeneity in professional i-dentity scores.Educators can guide students with nursing example case.The social status,attractiveness and belonging of the nursing profes-sion should be improved.