General HIV-Related Knowledge and Attitudes Among Nurses and Nursing Students: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis with Narrative Synthesis of Clinical Practices (2011–2026)

Background/Objectives: Nurses and nursing students are central to HIV prevention and care, but studies of their general HIV-related knowledge, attitudes, and practices use heterogeneous populations, instruments, scoring systems, and thresholds. This review had three objectives: (1) to meta-analyze, separately, the prevalence of study-defined high/good general HIV knowledge, mean general knowledge scores, prevalence of study-defined positive/favorable general attitudes, and mean favorable-attitude scores; (2) to synthesize HIV-related clinical-practice findings narratively when measures were not comparable; and (3) to explore whether pooled knowledge and attitude estimates differed between practicing nurses and nursing students. General outcomes excluded narrowly focused PrEP-, PEP-, stigma-only, and item-level constructs.