220 Nursing Essay Example Topics to Inspire Your Brilliant Papers

Nurses are the backbone of the healthcare industry. They play an essential role in society by promoting health, providing care and support, educating the public on disease and injury prevention, advocating for patients, raising awareness, and breaking the stigma around various medical conditions.

To become a nurse, you should earn your degree, pass the exam, and obtain state licensure. Although degree courses vary between schools and specializations, they all involve a lot of writing. If you aren't a skilled writer but plan to join the nursing profession, you'd better start practicing.

Find below 200+ topic suggestions for nursing as a profession essay, personal philosophy paper, history of nursing research, and many other subject areas and paper types. If you need a full-length sample, you can hire a professional nursing essay writer. You can also turn to our essay writing services for editing and proofreading your draft to prepare it for submission.

Sample Topics for an Essay About Nursing Profession

Nursing is distinct from other healthcare professions by its approach to patient care and a broad scope of practice: caring for patients, promoting health, assisting in research, informing the community, teaching, training, advocating for the patients, and engaging in healthcare policymaking. There are many roles, specializations, and levels of education in the nursing profession. Still, they are all guided by the same ethical principles and philosophy. To learn more about nursing as a calling and a career option, explore these topics for an essay on nursing profession: 

1. What personal qualities should one possess to become a good nurse?
2. Which skills are the most indispensable for a nurse?
3. Which skills have you acquired during your latest practice, and how do you plan to use them in the future?
4. Adverse experiences in the nursing profession
5. Define the meaning of professionalism in nursing: essay with elements of reflection
6. Burnout of nursing personnel in rural areas
7. Occupational stress among ICU nursing staff
8. Workplace boredom and its influence on performance
9. Nursing shortage as an opportunity for community transformation
10. Conflicting partnership patterns in the nursing profession
11. Critical analysis of nursing textbooks
12. Fundamental nursing texts and their impact on vocational choices of future nurses
13. Analysis of paradigms and ideologies influencing nursing in the 20^th century
14. Nursing agency under regulations: limits and moral dilemmas
15. Core professional values of nursing: what makes nursing a calling rather than just a career
16. Comparative analysis of nursing values in the USA and China
17. Striving for excellence: how nursing education contributes to optimal patient care
18. Leadership development in nursing through community involvement
19. Past and present debates in nursing ethics
20. Technological competencies of a modern nurse

History of Nursing Essay Sample Topics

Nursing has undergone dramatic changes in the past centuries, experiencing many influences: wars, shifting attitudes towards religion, changes in societal norms, women's and minorities' struggle for rights and recognition, etc. These factors keep influencing nursing today. Studying nursing history is crucial for understanding and improving patient care and nursing practice. Improve your knowledge of the subject by delving into the following issues:

1. Comprehensive nursing views in ancient times
2. The role of religious orders in health care and nursing in the Middle Ages
3. Stephen Girard: compassionate nursing of the Age of Enlightenment 
4. Managing epidemics in the growing urban environment during the Industrial Age
5. The division between secular and religious forms of nursing in the Modern Era
6. "Lady with the Lamp:" Florence Nightingale and her role in the establishment of professional nursing
7. Red Cross movement in 1867–1884
8. The role of nursing in the Women's Rights movement of the 19^th century
9. Colonial nursing: the complicated legacy of imperialism in Africa
10. Nurses and physicians in the 19^th century 
11. Contextual interpretation of nursing complicity with eugenics at the turn of the 20^th century
12. Nurses and military medicine during the Great War
13. Recovering lost threads of nursing legacy: a study of local archives
14. Gender imbalance in the nursing profession: a historical perspective
15. Restoring justice: why nursing became sidelined within the history of medicine
16. History of liberation: nurses as an oppressed group
17. Race relations and cultural competency in nursing
18. Migration, public health, and nursing: historical trends in the USA
19. The concept of community in Nursing History
20. Native American environmental views: a nursing perspective

Personal Philosophy of Nursing Essay Examples

Personal philosophy of nursing is your beliefs, ethics, and values that guide and motivate you as a practicing or aspiring nursing professional. Personal philosophy of nursing is a common topic for nursing school admissions essay or scholarship application essay since it allows exploring students' motivation, deeply held beliefs, and goals. Many instructors also ask their students to think critically about the field they are about to enter and outline their personal views as a self-reflection exercise. Try these topics for writing an impressive nursing entrance essay samples:

1. Why nursing: essay about career satisfaction and perspectives
2. Why I chose nursing: essay about your path to the vocation
3. How I intend to achieve my nursing career goals: essay about plans
4. What role models influenced your decision to join the nursing profession?
5. Which soft skills do you deem the most important for a nurse and why?
6. Which book has influenced your self-identity and practice as a nurse?
7. Describe the use of critical thinking in your nursing practice
8. My story: what experiences shaped your values and skills that apply to nursing
9. What nursing means to you: definition and self-reflection
10. How do you envision your future in nursing: long-term goals and mission
11. How do you plan to change society through nursing?
12. What nursing values are the most important to you?
13. What professional achievements have filled you with a sense of personal pride?
14. What do you see as the nurse's primary responsibility?
15. How do you understand patient advocacy as a nurse?
16. Personal grounding: steps to achieving balance as a practicing nurse
17. How can you be creative as a nurse?
18. Can you recall a moment when you had to display courage as a nurse?
19. Your personal reflective practices for professional growth
20. How do you use narrative skills in your nursing practice?

Nursing School Essay Examples

Once you get admitted to a program that provides training in nursing, you will have three to four years of studying, practicing, and writing essays on all aspects of nursing. From basic concepts and values to particular cases, here are some of the example topics:

1. Basic concepts of administering medications
2. The importance of the systemized environment for patient's healing
3. Basic aseptic and infection-control protocols during invasive surgeries
4. Complementary therapies and their effectiveness: a nursing perspective
5. Nurse's role in transitional care
6. Nurse's role in interpreting prescriptions and administering medications
7. Nurse's role in managing and monitoring symptoms after discharge
8. Nurse's role in pain relief and management
9. The importance of empathy in nurse-patient interactions
10. Nursing values in your state: a study of registered nurses and their expectations
11. Public perception of the nursing profession
12. Robots and robotics in nursing
13. Forensic nursing as a career path
14. Telling nursing journals from predatory publications
15. Assessing the quality of open-access nursing journals
16. Innovation in nursing practice
17. Responsibilities of nurse authors, editors, and reviewers in case of retractions in the research literature
18. Challenges of intensive care nursing
19. Skills and competencies of pediatric and neonatal nursing professional
20. Holistic nursing as a specialty

Application of the Nursing Scholarship: Essay Examples on Nursing Theory

Nursing has always been a practical field, but it went hand in hand with theory and evidence-based research for laying the scientific basis of care, health promotion, and disease prevention. Nursing science produces knowledge of healthcare systems and environments and shapes healthcare policies to improve outcomes for patients and communities. If you want to delve into the theory of nursing, try exploring these topics:

1. Lavinia Dock's Materia Medica and contribution to nursing theory
2. Trade unionism in nursing
3. Nursing and religion in patient's care journey
4. Nursing role in the continuity of care
5. Advantages and shortcomings of the hospital-based educational model of nursing
6. Environmental metapragmatism of nursing: future perspectives
7. The body as a central problem and vital resource in nursing
8. The issue of presence in telenursing
9. Empirics in the nursing science
10. Application of machine technologies in nursing for patient care
11. The current stage of nursing science and new horizons
12. The moral component of nursing knowledge
13. Esthetic dimension: nursing as art versus science
14. The sociopolitical context of nursing 
15. Personal knowledge as a component of nursing theory and practice
16. Spirituality as a way of knowing in nursing practice
17. Schools of thought in nursing science
18. Feminism and cultural competence in nursing
19. Application of nursing theory in everyday practice
20. Clinical application of Peplau's phases

Nursing Education Essay Topic Examples

Nursing education is the formal learning and training of nursing professionals. It consists of theoretical and practical preparation of nurses for their duties as care providers and medical practitioners, including various post-qualification courses for the professional development of working nurses. Explore these topics pertaining to teaching and preparing students for a career path in nursing:

1. Teaching and role-modeling core values of the nursing profession
2. Core competencies of nursing educators
3. Caring as a cornerstone of nursing education
4. Teaching behaviors of nurse educators in a clinical setting
5. Student's expectations and perception of clinical teaching
6. Critical assessment of the NSPIC tool's reliability
7. The impact of the student-mentor relationship on nursing students' intent to graduate
8. Creating a framework for student success in nursing education
9. Teaching strategies to develop caring consciousness among the students
10. Nurse instructor's role in the transformation of the healthcare system
11. Raising humanistic professional awareness of healthcare students
12. Teaching nursing students self-care for improved performance and burnout prevention
13. Establishing caring interaction between faculty and students in nursing education
14. Basic conceptual and theoretical frameworks for nurse education
15. Student-faculty relationships and their effect on academic outcomes
16. Techniques for developing clinical competence of nursing students
17. Specific challenges of mature nursing students
18. Metaphors and storytelling in work-readiness literature for nursing students
19. Significance of nursing research in continuous professional growth
20. Escape rooms' effectiveness for therapeutic communication in nursing education

Topics for Essay on Nursing Career in Obstetrics

Obstetrical nursing is a challenging but rewarding specialization, especially if you enjoy working closely with expectant mothers and infants. Responsibilities of an obstetric nurse include performing physical exams of pregnant patients (blood pressure, ultrasounds, etc.), working alongside physicians during delivery, responding to emergencies, monitoring the baby's health, helping the mother to recover after delivery, and guiding parents on caring for themselves and their newborns. This specialization requires strong communication skills, critical thinking, stress management, and physical strength to remain on your feet for long periods and help a patient change position during delivery. If you are interested in pursuing a career in obstetrics, look into these topics:

1. A human touch: how nurses can improve outcomes for mothers and infants by humanizing technical and impersonal medical procedures
2. Challenges and barriers to the improvement of obstetrics care in large cities
3. Missed nursing care in obstetrics and gynecology: common cases and ways of curbing
4. Quick decisions and shifting priorities: coping with uncertainty in OB/GYN nursing
5. What can we learn from traditional practices of labor and delivery care 
6. WHO evidence-based practice guidelines for obstetric nurses
7. Male students' attitudes towards a career in obstetrics: perception of barriers and ways to overcome them
8. Nurse's role in safe maternal transportation
9. Nursing support through the latent or early labor
10. New approaches to intrapartum nursing care
11. Suggestions for safer obstetric care in the USA
12. Legal and professional issues in obstetric care
13. The role of midwifery in introductory nursing course
14. Measuring patient satisfaction in obstetric nursing practice
15. Management of the third stage of labor: active vs. expectant strategy
16. What does "normal birth" mean in the modern world?
17. Benefits and barriers of water birth
18. New pedagogy for obstetric nurse education
19. Nurse's role in demedicalization of women's health care
20. Systematization of high-risk pregnancy care for improved outcomes

Psychiatric Nursing Topic Samples

Psychiatric or mental health nurses work double duty providing physical and mental health care for patients with mental health problems, psychiatric disorders, and substance abuse disorders. Psychiatric nurses educate patients, families, and communities, advocate, and work to break the stigma around mental health issues. Key skills include empathy, communication, establishing relationships, and problem-solving. One of the main challenges of this specialization is keeping a balance between compassion and healthy emotional distance. To learn more, explore one of these topics:

1. Specific challenges of a psychiatric nurse
2. The role of spirituality in mental health and psychiatric nursing
3. Psychiatric care for adult survivors of child abuse
4. Generalist vs. specialist approach in psychiatric nursing education
5. Psychiatric nursing in the US: crisis in the profession
6. Evidence-based practices in psychiatric nursing care
7. History of mental health nursing and its place in education programs
8. The role of therapeutic interpersonal relationships in mental health care
9. Truth and fiction in mental health and psychiatric nursing
10. Fresh approaches to child psychiatric nursing
11. Introducing system and structure for psychiatric nursing intervention
12. Skills and competencies for recovery-oriented mental health nursing
13. Psychiatric care in combat zones
14. Leadership in psychiatric nursing
15. Understanding and incorporating biological phenomena into mental health nursing
16. Cultural competence in psychiatric nursing
17. Understanding impulsivity in psychiatric nursing practice
18. The theoretical framework for psychiatric nursing
19. Licensure, accreditation, certification & education in childhood/adolescent psychiatric nursing
20. Concept of trauma in psychiatric nursing practice

Samples of Geriatric and Palliative Nursing Topics

Geriatric nursing serves older adults, while palliative nursing cares for patients of all ages suffering from severe and life-threatening illnesses. They largely overlap because palliative care has a large older adult population that keeps growing in aging societies. Also, both aim to improve quality of life, ease suffering until death, and are characterized by difficult treatment decisions, complicated symptom management, and spiritual distress. Geriatric/palliative care nurses work in varied settings: care homes, hospitals, hospices, and patients' homes. They help relieve patient and family suffering by managing symptoms, educating, counseling, and providing support and comfort. Palliative nurses should combine medical knowledge, critical thinking, and observation with empathy and compassion. Find out more by exploring the following essay topics:

1. Dying at home: terminally ill nursing in private care
2. Role of nursing in accurate medication of critically and terminally ill patients
3. Telling the painful truth: moral dilemmas in palliative care
4. Patient-centered care at the end of life
5. Caregiving issues of palliative nursing
6. Management of delirium in hospitalized older adults
7. Principles of bereavement care
8. Effects of death on family: Factors influencing grief and consequences of bereavement
9. Recognizing sights of cognitive disturbances in elderly patients
10. Specific challenges of pediatric palliative care nursing
11. The philosophy of palliative care
12. Compassion fatigue in oncology nursing
13. Theories and models of hospice care nursing
14. New paths in cancer patient care
15. COVID-19 and its impact on global palliative nursing
16. Nurse's role in care planning and end-of-life decisions for patients with cancer
17. Fostering positive emotions and well-being at the end of life through nursing practices
18. End-of-life nursing education: traditional and new approaches
19. Using Big Data in geriatric nursing
20. Geriatric nursing in nursing homes

Acute and Trauma Nursing Essay Example Topics

Emergency and trauma nurse specializes in diagnosing and treating injuries and illnesses that put a patient's life at immediate risk. The unpredictable and critical nature of trauma demands nurses to be proactive, multitasking, emotionally stable, stress-resilient, and have high-functioning processing skills to make life-saving decisions in chaotic situations. Trauma is the leading cause of death for people below the age of 45, so qualified trauma nursing is critical. If you are interested in this specialization, study the following suggestions:

1. Prevention and management of skin tears
2. Trauma-informed nursing care for acute mental health inpatients
3. Multidisciplinary collaboration in nursing for acute trauma treatment
4. Acute rehabilitation after trauma
5. Hypothermia, acidosis, and coagulopathy: understanding the triad for critical care nursing
6. Specific challenges of caring for pediatric patients with multisystem trauma
7. Procedural challenges of night perioperative care coordination
8. Nursing consideration for treating firearm injuries
9. Nursing care for hospitalized seniors with acute trauma
10. The nursing workload in ICU and caring for trauma victims
11. Home-based nursing care for children with critical illness
12. Preventive interventions in acute to chronic pain transition
13. Nursing care for orthopedic trauma patients
14. Nursing roles and responsibilities in prone positioning of trauma patients
15. Nurse's responsibilities in care for acute head trauma patients
16. Challenges in caring for genital trauma after acute sexualized violence
17. Caring for patients with posttraumatic stress disorder and acute stress disorder
18. The role of critical care nurse practitioners in health care delivery
19. Nursing interventions in acute spinal cord trauma patients
20. Nurse's role in acute pain management of trauma patients

Topic Samples about Difficult Cases and Dilemmas in Nursing

Nurses often face situations where they have to make difficult decisions based on their values and belief, whether something is right or wrong, safe or unsafe. Such cases include protecting patients' privacy, advising patients whose religious beliefs contradict the medical necessity for treatment or intervention, keeping personal and professional boundaries, helping to make end-of-life decisions, ensuring informed consent in a position of vulnerability, aligning duty and compassion with safety protocols, etc. It's better to come prepared for these cases. The following topics will help you with that:

1. Ethics and challenges in care for battered women
2. Challenges and dilemmas of nursing care for renal patients
3. Ethical dilemmas in the ICU
4. Moral dilemmas of palliative and end-of-life care
5. Critical thinking and its role in resolving nursing dilemmas
6. Ethical issues and difficult choices in caring for patients with dementia
7. Bioethics in nursing
8. Moral distress in the nursing profession and ways of curbing it
9. Application and removal of patient restraints in long-term care
10. Challenge and dilemma of nursing decisions about self-neglect cases 
11. Nursing research: patient privacy and publication ethics
12. Safety regulations vs. freedom in nursing homes for elderly
13. Challenges of caring for patients in the advanced stages of cancer
14. Caring for patients undergoing radiation therapy
15. Challenges of caring for patients with chronic and acute complex wounds
16. Nursing care for older patients with postoperative delirium
17. Caring for patients who have experienced emotional maltreatment
18. Management of trauma during pregnancy
19. Caring for patients recovering from lower limb amputation
20. The problem of homophobia in nursing

For some ready-made samples illustrating academic writing standards, paper structure, citation, and building an argument, check here. For more inspiring topics about nursing and writing tips for nurses, read our earlier blog. And don't forget that you can always rely on us for academic assistance. Happy writing!