A nursing project topic gets approved in Nigeria when it names a population you can reach on your clinical posting, an outcome you can measure with an instrument that already exists, and a problem you can justify with a national figure. The thirty topics below are built that way, each with the one-line research question that turns it into a project.
They are grouped by the areas Nigerian nursing departments supervise: maternal and child health, community and primary health care, medical-surgical nursing, mental health and the nursing workforce, and nursing education and administration. The national figures come from the 2023–24 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey Key Indicators Report (National Population Commission and ICF, September 2024).
What makes a nursing project topic approvable in a Nigerian department?
A BNSc final year project, and the project in a college of nursing, is reviewed twice before anyone reads a chapter: once by the supervisor, who checks feasibility, and once by the Health Research Ethics Committee of the hospital or university where the data will be collected. Both are asking the same four questions, and a topic that answers them on the first page rarely comes back.
| Question the reviewer asks | What the topic must contain | Example of a failing topic |
|---|---|---|
| Can this student reach the population? | A ward, clinic, community or school the student is posted to or can travel to | Nurses in all tertiary hospitals in Nigeria |
| Can the outcome be measured? | A named instrument or a clinical record that already holds the variable | Quality of life of patients, with no scale named |
| Will ethics approval be granted in time? | No intervention on patients, no minors without guardian consent, no identifiable clinical data | Effect of a new wound dressing protocol on healing |
| Is there a problem to justify? | A national or state figure showing the gap the study addresses | An appraisal of nursing care in Nigeria |
The regulator matters here for one reason: the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria, established by Decree No. 89 of 1979 and now the Nursing and Midwifery (Registration etc.) Act, Cap. N143, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, reports over 250,000 registered nursing and midwifery professionals. A topic about nurses therefore draws its population from a licensed, countable workforce.
Which national figures should a nursing topic be built on?
Every topic below can open its background of the study with one of these figures. All are from the 2023–24 NDHS Key Indicators Report; the mortality rates refer to the five years preceding the survey and the care indicators to births in the two years preceding it.
| Indicator (NDHS 2023–24) | Figure | Topic area it justifies |
|---|---|---|
| Total fertility rate | 4.8 children per woman | Family planning, maternal health |
| Contraceptive prevalence, currently married women | 20% | Family planning uptake |
| Antenatal care from a skilled provider | 63% (down from 67% in 2018) | Antenatal attendance |
| Live births delivered in a health facility | 43% | Facility delivery, birth preparedness |
| Live births attended by a skilled provider | 46% | Skilled birth attendance |
| Postnatal check within 2 days, mothers / newborns | 43% / 42% | Postnatal care |
| Children 12–23 months with no vaccinations | 31% | Immunisation |
| Children under 5 stunted / wasted / underweight | 40% / 8% / 27% | Child nutrition |
| Infants under 6 months exclusively breastfed | 29% | Infant feeding |
| Children under 5 who slept under an ITN | 43% | Malaria prevention |
| Neonatal / infant / under-5 mortality | 41 / 63 / 110 per 1,000 live births | Newborn and child survival |
What are good maternal and child health nursing topics?
- Knowledge and practice of birth preparedness and complication readiness among pregnant women attending antenatal clinic at a named teaching hospital. Research question: what proportion of attendees have a saved fund, an identified facility and a transport plan for delivery?
- Factors influencing the choice of home delivery among women of childbearing age in a named rural community. Research question: which of cost, distance, attitude of health workers and family decision-making is most often cited by women who delivered at home?
- Uptake of postnatal care within 48 hours of delivery among mothers at a named primary health centre. Research question: what proportion of mothers and newborns received a check within two days, and what predicts it?
- Knowledge, attitude and practice of exclusive breastfeeding among nursing mothers attending an immunisation clinic. Research question: does knowledge of the six-month recommendation predict actual exclusive breastfeeding?
- Determinants of modern contraceptive use among married women in a named local government area. Research question: how do spousal approval, education and parity relate to current use of a modern method?
- Reasons for incomplete immunisation among children aged 12 to 23 months in a named urban slum. Research question: what proportion of children have received no vaccine, and what do their mothers give as the reason?
- Nurses’ adherence to partograph use in labour wards of a named state hospital. Research question: what proportion of deliveries in the last three months have a fully completed partograph in the case notes?
- Knowledge of danger signs in pregnancy among women attending antenatal clinic in a named general hospital. Research question: how many of the recognised danger signs can the average attendee name, and does parity make a difference?
What are good community and primary health care nursing topics?
- Ownership and use of insecticide-treated nets among households with children under five in a named community. Research question: what is the gap between owning a net and a child sleeping under it the previous night?
- Knowledge and practice of intermittent preventive treatment of malaria among pregnant women at a named primary health centre. Research question: what proportion took at least three doses of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine in their last pregnancy?
- Health-seeking behaviour for childhood fever among caregivers in a named market community. Research question: where do caregivers first seek care for a febrile child, and how long after onset?
- Knowledge and preventive practices regarding Lassa fever among residents of a named endemic local government area. Research question: which of the rodent-control and food-storage practices recommended by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control are actually followed?
- Nutritional status of under-five children and maternal feeding practices in a named rural community. Research question: what proportion of children are stunted by mid-upper-arm circumference and weight-for-age, and how does it relate to complementary feeding?
- Perceived barriers to utilisation of primary health care services among women in a named ward. Research question: which barriers, ranked, keep women from using the nearest primary health centre?
What are good medical-surgical and clinical nursing topics?
- Compliance with hand hygiene among nurses in the surgical wards of a named teaching hospital. Research question: what proportion of the five hand-hygiene moments are observed, and does it differ by shift?
- Knowledge and practice of pressure injury prevention among nurses caring for bedridden patients. Research question: is repositioning documented every two hours, and what stops it when it is not?
- Medication adherence and its determinants among hypertensive patients attending a named medical outpatient clinic. Research question: what proportion are adherent on a validated adherence scale, and does pill burden or cost explain non-adherence?
- Self-care practices among type 2 diabetic patients attending a named endocrinology clinic. Research question: which of diet, foot care, glucose monitoring and medication is least practised, and why?
- Knowledge and practice of postoperative pain assessment among nurses in a named surgical unit. Research question: is a pain scale used and recorded at each assessment, and how does that relate to the nurse’s years of experience?
- Nurses’ knowledge and practice of standard precautions for infection prevention in a named emergency department. Research question: which precaution has the lowest compliance, and what is the reported reason?

What are good mental health and nursing workforce topics?
- Burnout and its correlates among nurses in a named tertiary hospital. Research question: what proportion score high on emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and reduced personal accomplishment, and does ward or shift pattern predict it?
- Intention to migrate and its determinants among final year nursing students of a named university. Research question: what proportion intend to practise abroad within five years of registration, and which push factors rank highest?
- Job satisfaction and turnover intention among nurses in a named state hospital. Research question: does satisfaction with pay, supervision and workload predict the intention to leave within a year?
- Knowledge and attitude of nurses toward patients with mental illness in a named general hospital. Research question: is stigma toward psychiatric patients lower among nurses with a psychiatric posting?
- Prevalence of depressive symptoms and associated factors among nursing students in a named college of nursing. Research question: what proportion screen positive on a validated depression scale, and does academic level or accommodation relate to it?
Two cautions. The Maslach Burnout Inventory, the standard burnout instrument for human services staff, has 22 items and three subscales, and its publisher states it is not free and must be purchased to administer, so budget for it or choose an open instrument. For depression and stress scales, the comparison of which validated scale fits a Nigerian project covers the free ones, their scoring and their Nigerian validation studies.
What are good nursing education and administration topics?
- Perception of the clinical learning environment among student nurses on posting in a named teaching hospital. Research question: which aspects of supervision and ward atmosphere score lowest, and do they differ between medical and surgical postings?
- Factors influencing nurses’ participation in continuing professional development in a named hospital. Research question: what proportion attended a mandatory continuing professional development programme in the last licence cycle, and what stopped the rest?
- Documentation practices of nurses and factors affecting the quality of nursing records in a named hospital. Research question: on an audit of fifty case notes, which elements of the nursing process are most often missing?
- Nurse-patient ratio and perceived quality of care in the medical wards of a named tertiary hospital. Research question: how does the number of patients per nurse per shift relate to nurses’ self-reported missed care?
- Knowledge and utilisation of the nursing process among nurses in a named secondary health facility. Research question: what proportion can state the five steps, and what proportion apply them in the records reviewed?
Which nursing topics should you avoid?
Five kinds come back more often than the rest. First, any topic that changes what a patient receives, such as testing a dressing or a health education intervention on admitted patients; an undergraduate rarely gets that approval in time. Second, topics on children, prisoners or psychiatric inpatients without an existing departmental arrangement, because consent is where the timeline breaks. Third, a national or state title carried by a single-ward sample. Fourth, a knowledge, attitude and practice study that repeats five projects already in the departmental library with no new variable; check how many published Nigerian studies already exist on the topic and add the variable none of them measured. Fifth, a topic whose outcome lives in clinical records you have not yet been allowed to see.
If your first submission has already been returned, the reasons and the repair for each are in the guide to what to do when a project topic is rejected; for nursing the problem is almost always feasibility or ethics, rarely relevance.
How do you turn the topic into a proposal this week?
Take the research question in the list and write two more like it on different variables of the same population; those three become the specific objectives. Name the population with the source of its size: the clinic’s attendance register, the hospital’s nursing establishment, or the community’s census projection. For a knowledge and practice study, build the instrument by the ten steps in the guide to designing and validating a questionnaire for a health project. For a topic that needs interviews, such as the reasons for home delivery, the answer to how many respondents a qualitative project needs gives the number and the saturation argument a panel accepts. Then write the ethics application the same week, because the committee’s calendar, not your writing speed, sets the earliest date you can collect data.
The same logic applied to another faculty is in the list of approvable banking and finance project topics, grouped by data source rather than clinical area.
Turn the topic into Chapter One before your next supervision
Paste the topic and its research question into Tesify and it drafts the background of the study around the NDHS figure that justifies it, the statement of the problem, three matched objectives and questions, and the significance section in a nursing panel’s terms. The automatic bibliography formats the NDHS report and your instrument’s validation study in APA. There is a free plan and no card is required.
Frequently asked questions
How do I choose a nursing project topic in Nigeria?
Start from the ward, clinic or community you are posted to, pick one measurable outcome in that population, and check that a national figure from the NDHS or a Ministry report shows a gap in it. Write the research question first; if it names the population, the variable and the setting, the topic is ready to submit.
Do nursing projects in Nigeria need ethics approval?
Yes. Data collected from patients, clients or health workers in a facility needs approval from that facility’s Health Research Ethics Committee, and many universities require their own committee’s approval as well. Apply as soon as the topic is approved, because committee meeting dates decide when you can start.
Can I do a nursing project without a questionnaire?
Yes. Record audits (partograph completion, nursing documentation, hand-hygiene observation) and in-depth interviews are all accepted designs. An observational checklist or an audit tool is described in Chapter Three the way a questionnaire would be, with its validation.
What is the best source of national health figures for the background of the study?
The 2023–24 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey Key Indicators Report, published by the National Population Commission and ICF in September 2024. It gives fertility, family planning, antenatal, delivery, postnatal, immunisation, nutrition, malaria and child mortality figures, most of them by zone and state.
How many respondents does a nursing project need?
For a survey, the sample is calculated from the population of the clinic or unit with a formula your department accepts, and a total of 100 to 300 respondents is typical for a single facility. For interview studies, 10 to 20 participants with a saturation argument is the usual range.
Which nursing topics are most often rejected?
Intervention studies on admitted patients, studies on children or psychiatric inpatients without an existing arrangement, national titles on single-ward samples, and knowledge-attitude-practice studies that repeat an existing departmental project without a new variable.
Is the Maslach Burnout Inventory free to use in a student project?
No. The publisher states that the MBI is not free and requires a licence to administer, so a burnout topic needs a budget for the licence or an alternative open instrument agreed with the supervisor.
Should the topic name the hospital?
Yes, in the topic submitted to the department, because the population and the ethics application depend on it; follow the department’s format guide on how the bound copy describes the facility.

