A narrative review exploring the attitudes of nursing and complementary medicine students and practitioners toward biosciences curricula

A foundational understanding of the biosciences underpins most undergraduate programmes of study that lead to a career in the healthcare professions. The study of bioscience subjects including anatomy, physiology, microbiology and biochemistry has been reported to be challenging for a subset of these students with many students reporting negative attitudes. Identifying the factors that drive attitudes of students and practitioners towards the study of biosciences could inform curriculum modifications to reduce the challenges experienced by students. A review of the literature was undertaken using the search terms 'student attitudes', 'biosciences', 'nursing', 'complementary medicine', and 'student success'. The review includes peer-reviewed primary data articles published from 1996 to 2023. The search identified 26 articles that met the inclusion criteria with the majority of published research in the nursing field. The literature review identified three major themes underpinning the attitudes towards biosciences reported by nursing and complementary medicine students and practitioners: actual or perceived intellectual difficulty of the bioscience content, a perceived lack of relevance of the bioscience subjects to their programme of study, and previous experiences studying the sciences. Negative attitudes towards the study of the biosciences can reduce engagement, create anxiety, decrease motivation to learn, and ultimately affect academic performance of students. Through identifying, acknowledging and responding to perceived challenges with bioscience subjects, educators may be able to improve engagement, performance and ultimately student success and enhanced practitioner knowledge and skills.