A literature search was undertaken guided by a pro-
tocol restricting the publication dates to 1997–
2006; search terms used included the use of Bool-
ean operators to link key words (student nursing
or nurse education) and (evaluation or curriculum
evaluation) post-97 from CINAHL to Nursing educa-
tion and (evaluation or course evaluation) post-97
from BNI. These two databases contain the major-
ity of nursing papers and it was considered that lit-
tle would be gained by searching elsewhere. Papers
retrieved were read and filtered by three of the
authors (RW, MR, MJ) to decide, by consensus,
which were relevant to the present review.
Inclusion criteria:
Relate to UK nursing curricula.
Concerned with eva luation of UK nursing
curricula.
Used systematic methods to evaluate UK nursing
curricula.
Exclusion criteria:
Papers focusing on educational policy.
Curricular design (without evaluation).
Reviews and did not use systematic methods
(e.g. were merely the opinion of the autho r).
Non-UK papers were excluded both to provide
manageable numbers of papers and to restrict
the focus to specific recent changes in UK nurse
education.
The wider study of which this review formed a
part was funded by NHS Education Scotland (NES)
and was granted ethics approval by both the Uni-
versity of Dundee and National Research Ethics
Service.