Nursing Internship in Pre-registration Nursing Education Programs: A Scoping Review

A nursing internship is a program for the transition of nursing students to practice as registered nurses, preparing them to face real life in the clinical environment. A well-structured nursing internship program could promote clinical competency, caring ability, and self-confidence in dealing with complex clinical environments.

This scoping review aimed to synthesize the knowledge of existing literature on pre-registration nursing internship programs.

This review was conducted following a methodological framework for a scoping review, identifying the research questions, exploring relevant studies, study selection, charting the data, and collating, summarizing, and reporting the results. Literature searches were conducted in the databases, including Medline, CINAHL, Ovid, and ScienceDirect.

It was found that the caring ability, perceived level of competency, and self-efficacy of nursing interns were likely to improve after completing the internship. Nursing interns had both positive and negative experiences of undergoing internship programs. Positive aspects of a nursing internship included filling the theory and practice gap and improving self-confidence, independence, and readiness for practice. Challenges encountered were insufficient support, workload, being involved in non-nursing work, transition shock, and feeling lost.

The nursing internship programs effectively bridge theoretical knowledge with practical skills, fostering professional growth, clinical competency, and communication abilities. The concerning issues, such as burnout, transition shock, and limited critical thinking development, highlight the need for improvements in support systems and curriculum design.