Aims: To gather, assess and synthesise the currently available evidence of educational interventions on evidencebased
nursing (EBN).
Background: Previous systematic reviews have focused on the items used in reporting educational interventions for
facilitating evidence-based practices in medicine and health care or teaching research literacy in nursing as well as
on the outcomes of these interventions.
Design: A systematic review based on a procedure of the Centre for Reviews and Disseminations for conducting a
systematic review of health interventions.
Data Sources and Methods: Texts from 2008 to 2015 were sought from the Cochrane, CINAHL and PubMed Medline
databases. Eight studies were selected for the final data and reviewed for quality. Data were analysed with narrative
synthesis including qualitative content analysis.
Results: Four main categories and sixteen subcategories were identified. The learning contents included principles of
EBN and research, the process of EBN, and planning a change in practice. The most popular teaching/learning
methods were lectures/didactic presentations and group work. The interventions encouraged learners to critically
examine and evaluate their practice. The interventions also improved participants' capacity to identify the need
for research evidence in clinical practice.
Conclusion: The educational interventions were fairly similar and had promising results. However, as the level of
evidence was modest in the studies, there are several development needs for interventions and further research
challenges. Interventions should provide participants with sufficient competences for implementing every step of
EBN, with special focus on the implementation of evidence in patient care. The assessment of the outcomes of interventions
should cover all learning categories of EBN with focus on medium to long-term effectiveness. The influence
of different teaching/learning methods and learning contexts and settings should be investigated further.