Tobacco use is a preventable behavioral risk factor for non-communicable diseases, killing over 8 million people a year around the world (World Health Organization, 2003a, World Health Organization, 2023b). In each year, direct tobacco use caused more than 7 million deaths and 1.3 million non-smokers are killed by second-hand smoke. (World Health Organization, 2003a, World Health Organization, 2023b). WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control recommends that all healthcare professionals should provide smoking cessation intervention by using the 5 A’s (Ask about smoking status, Advise to quit smoking, Assess readiness to quit, Assist to quit and Arrange follow-up) skills to help smokers quit (WHO, 2003a). To promote tobacco control worldwide, the International Council of Nurses affirms that health promotion and illness prevention are among the fundamental responsibilities of the nurse and nurses should be involved in tobacco-related intervention (International Council of Nurses, 2021).

Nurses are the largest group of healthcare professionals and are more likely to encounter smoking patients in their daily work (Farver-Vestergaard et al.,2023). Meanwhile, according to the latest US annual Gallup rating of various professions, nursing is the most trusted profession (Gallup, 2022). The public values and trusts the specific health advice offered by nurses. Nursing professionals may have an important “window of opportunity” for delivering smoking cessation intervention to smoking patients. A Cochrane review showed that nurse-led smoking cessation intervention increases smokers’ success in quitting smoking, especially in hospitals (Rice et al., 2017). However, most nurses asked about patients’ smoking status, but few assisted them in quitting (Mak et al., 2018, Sarna et al., 2009, Sarna et al., 2016). The lack of smoking cessation training prevents nurses and other healthcare professionals from delivering smoking cessation interventions in hospital settings (Li et al., 2021, Moxham et al., 2023, Sharpe et al., 2018). Several cross-sectional surveys (Chan et al., 2008a, Chan et al., 2008b, Patelarou et al., 2011, VanDevanter et al., 2017) showed that less than 40% of nursing students had received smoking cessation training in their undergraduate curriculum. Despite the tremendous importance of smoking cessation for patients’ quality of life and life expectancy, it is not a core part of the nursing curriculum in Hong Kong and China Mainland. Smoking cessation is normally incorporated in the class of health promotion and prevention of non-communicable diseases. More robust evidence on the benefit of smoking cessation training to nursing students is needed to promote the integration of such training into nursing curricula.

A literature search in PROSPERO, PubMed, Cochrane Library and JBI Database identified three systematic reviews of the effect of smoking cessation training on learning outcomes for healthcare professionals (Carson et al., 2012, Hyndman et al., 2019) or healthcare professional students in general (Ye et al., 2018), but no review specifically targeted nursing students was found. Learning outcomes, including knowledge, attitude, motivation, self-efficacy and practice or skills, are the competency of what students should know, perceive and be able to execute at the end of a learning process (Alberti et al., 2021). Given the differences in prior knowledge and experiences and the role of various healthcare disciplines, findings from practicing healthcare professionals in general or mixed groups of healthcare professional students may not be generalizable to nursing students. Hence, we conducted a systematic review to synthesize different teaching strategies, evaluate the learning outcomes of smoking cessation training in nursing students and provide recommendations for future smoking cessation nursing education.