Background: Nursing, as a human-centered profession, requires nurses who possess a deep sense of responsibility toward patients and society. Existentialism, which emphasizes human existence, freedom of choice, and individual responsibility, provides a powerful framework for analyzing and understanding the various dimensions of responsibility in nursing. The present study aimed to explore the nature of nurses’ responsibility based on existentialist philosophy.
Methods: This narrative review examined published Persian and English articles retrieved from the databases SID, MagIran, Elsevier, Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, and Google Scholar. The search was conducted using the Persian keywords responsibility, existential philosophy, and nurses, and the English keywords responsibility, accountability, existentialism, existential philosophy, and nurses, covering the period from 2010 to 2025.
Findings: Out of 164 retrieved articles, 20 met the inclusion criteria and were included in the study. The results showed that nurses have three main categories of responsibility in patient care: professional, social, and ethical. From the perspective of existentialist philosophy, responsibility in nursing relates to concepts such as freedom, autonomy, authenticity, and conscious choice.
Conclusion: Based on existentialist teachings, nurses can strengthen their accountability in clinical settings by accepting personal freedom and responsibility, paying attention to patients’ lived experiences, and consciously facing clinical anxieties. This approach can improve the quality of nursing care and enhance the patient experience.