Entrepreneurship in Nursing: a literature review

Abstract

Introduction: Nowadays, according to the variety of businesses for entrepreneurial nurses, they can have a tangible role in delivering safe, high-quality, patient-centered, accessible, and economical care through their creative activities. The current study is a review study of entrepreneurial studies to review and summarize data in the field of entrepreneurship in nursing.

Methods: In the current review study, articles in English relating to the aim of the study were searched and evaluated by using keywords related to “nurse” and “entrepreneurship” from 2000 to 2021 in various databases including Web of Science, PubMed, Factiva, EMBASE, Scopus and google scholar search engine. The search strategy was written based on Mesh terms and syntaxes specific to each database. Inclusion criteria were relating to the subject and having an accessible full text. The rest of the articles were excluded. Two researchers searched independently. After extracting articles, duplicates were excluded. Then an expert reviewed and categorized included studies.

Results: Entrepreneurial nurses need personal, interpersonal, commercial, and strategic skills. They can work as social, business, and inter-organizational entrepreneurs. However; entrepreneurial nurses have been constantly facing numerous personal, sociocultural, academic, organizational, etc. obstacles. Therefore, there must be internal and external stimuli in order to motivate them to overcome these obstacles.

Conclusion: Nurses have multiple needs in order to play they’re entrepreneurial role. Thus, it’s necessary to attempt to identify the obstacles and needs of entrepreneurial nurses and solve them to provide the necessary backgrounds for their creative activities so that they can meet the health needs of individuals and societies.