The Effects of Role Conflict on Nursing Faculty; A Systematic Review

Introduction: Nursing education in Iran is along with many other developing countries. Moving in advanced nursing education will rise to new challenges for nursing faculty. Role conflict is one of the challenges, which easily happen in nursing faculties. There are few studies with different results about the role conflict in nursing faculties around the world. This study has been done to determine the role conflict levels and effects. Methods: this is a systematic review study, and it has been done purposeful form by focusing on research questions. A computerized search was performed systematically since January 1998 to May 2014, by using five key words: role conflict, nursing faculty, nursing instructor, nursing teacher, nursing lecturer in Science direct, EBSCO Host, PubMed, Pro Quest, SID databases. Full text of suitable articles were selected and analyzed after several steps of evaluation. Results: According to search criteria, among 35622 articles, we finally selected 11. The results are expressed in two general categories including; levels of role conflict, and consequences of role conflict. Nursing faculty experienced different levels of role conflict in reviewed studies. This study showed that role conflict has personal and organizational effects. Conclusion: Role Conflict is normal and inevitable phenomenon in educational organization. Therefore, nursing faculty members could experience role conflict frequently. Understanding the nature of the conflict and its effects on nursing faculty could be playing an important role in the prediction and prevention of adverse effects in universities. The results of this study provide valuable information about the role conflict levels and the consequences for educational managers.