MINDFUL SELF-CARE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELLBEING AMONG B.SC. NURSING STUDENTS UNDERGOING CLINICAL TRAININGA: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Nursing students begin caring for patients long before they qualify. During clinical postings they meet illness, pain and death, work long shifts and are assessed at the same time, and many of them do this while their own sleep, meals and rest are pushed aside. Mindful self-care, which joins everyday self-care behaviour with an attentive awareness of one's own needs, has been proposed as one way of protecting wellbeing during this period. This systematic review set out to examine what is known about the relationship between mindful self-care and psychological wellbeing among nursing and other health-profession students in training. PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar were searched for peer-reviewed studies published between 2007 and 2026, and reference lists were checked by hand. Fourteen empirical studies met the inclusion criteria and were appraised with the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool and synthesised thematically. Five themes emerged: self-care is valued but unevenly practised; self-care and wellbeing rise and fall together; mindfulness-based and mind-body programmes ease stress; the demands of training wear self-care down; and self-care is a learned, contextual practice. The evidence is consistent in direction but rests mostly on cross-sectional and uncontrolled designs, and only one study came from India. No study directly examined mindful self-care and psychological wellbeing among B.Sc. Nursing students during clinical training, which marks a clear gap for future research and for nursing education.