An Overview of Entrepreneurship in Nursing: Challenges, Opportunities, and Barriers

Introduction: Nursing entrepreneurship has huge and promising opportunities for a nurse. However, the development of entrepreneurship in nursing still faces several obstacles. This overview aimed to review and summarize the main characteristics of nursing entrepreneurship, concept, barriers, and opportunities of nursing entrepreneurship in the world.Materials and Methods: In this overview, online databases (Medline, Scopus, Web of Science, ERIC, ProQuest, CIVILICA, and Google Scholar search engine) were searched in both English and Persian up to March ۲۰۲۳, using combinations of keywords (e.g., "nursing entrepreneurship", "nursing entrepreneurial", "barrier of nursing entrepreneur", "opportunities of nursing entrepreneur”, “nurses”, and “nursing student”), up to March ۲۰۲۳.Results: A total ۵ reviews and two systematic reviews were included. The concept of entrepreneurship in Nursing is related to personal and professional characteristics, such as autonomy, independence, flexibility, innovation, proactivity, self-confidence and responsibility. For nursing entrepreneurship there were seven barriers factors (fear, knowledge and skill; prior working culture experience; decision-making policy and regulations; health insurance, colleague jealousy; and unprofessional attitudes), and two supporting factors (knowledge and skills; ability to seek opportunities). In this regard, entrepreneurial nurses need personal, interpersonal, commercial, and strategic skills. Therefore, there must be internal and external stimuli in order to motivate nurses to overcome these obstacles.Conclusion: Entrepreneurial nurses need personal, interpersonal, commercial, and strategic skills. Thus, it’s necessary to attempt to identify the obstacles and needs of entrepreneurial nurses and solve them to provide the necessary backgrounds for nursing entrepreneurship so that they can meet the health needs of individuals and societies. Also the barriers that occurred to entrepreneur nurses, were more due to a lack of entrepreneurial knowledge, experience and skills.

Keywords:

Nursing entrepreneurship , barrier , opportunities , Nurses