Sustainable development awareness and related factors in nursing students: A correlational descriptive study

To determine the sustainable development awareness and related factors in nursing students.

Sustainable Development Goals have an important place in nursing education. While the Sustainable Development Goals set out the determinants of health, they also provide guidance to nurses for their interventions. In this respect, it is important to determine the awareness of nursing students and to address this issue in nursing education.

Correlational descriptive study.

A total of 199 Turkish nursing students were included in the study. Data were collected online through Google Forms between March and June 2021 by the demographic characteristics form and "Sustainable Development Awareness Scale".

The mean age of the nursing students in the study was 20.18 ( ± 1.27) years. Students' mean score from the scale was 164.41 ( ± 15.13) points. While 63.8 % of the participants stated not hearing of the sustainable development concept before and 77.4 % of them did not know about Sustainable Development Goals. The social sustainability, environmental sustainability and total scale scores were determined to show significant differences between the genders and female participants got higher scores compared with males. Participants over the age of twenty were found to score significantly higher in the environmental sustainability sub-dimension. According to the status of thinking that there is a relationship between sustainable development and nursing, the environmental sustainability scores of the students were found to differ statistically. According to the status of wanting to get more information about Sustainable Development Goals, the economic sustainability, environmental sustainability and total scale scores of the students were found to show a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05).

The sustainable development awareness levels of nursing students were found to be higher than the average. While more than half of the participants stated not hearing of the sustainable development concept before and three quarters of them did not know about Sustainable Development Goals. In this study, the scale total or sub-dimension scores were found to show significant differences according to gender, age, the status of thinking that there is a relationship between sustainable development and nursing and the status of wanting to get more information about Sustainable Development Goals. To mobilize future nurses, it can be suggested that SDGs be added to the curriculum, considering their knowledge and willingness.