This scoping review explores the concept of self-care and its implications to baccalaureate nursing students, importantly: barriers to, the importance of, and interventions of self-care. To direct this review a definition of self-care was developed as follows: Intentional lifestyle behaviors that promote physical and mental health, decrease stress levels, enhance well-being, and nurture mindfulness. This topic is of importance to nursing students undergoing a rigorous nursing program where stressors are increased, and self-care can be neglected. Nurses are helpers, and students join the profession to do just that while often not helping themselves first. This scoping review provided evidence to support initial efforts to promote self-care among baccalaureate nursing students in their program. A scoping review was performed utilizing EBSCOhost databases, using primarily search terms "self-care" and "nursing students" in which 23 articles were found to inform this work during summer 2024. Five areas of self-care (professional, mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual), and interventions within each area were identified. Managing these stressors through self-care was shown to be effective and productive. Self-care reduces the negative effects of stress, including, for example: burnout, mental illness, isolation, and substance abuse.
