The traditional nursing teaching knowledge point recommendation algorithm based on collaborative filtering is difficult to deal with the problem of data sparsity, while the traditional recommendation algorithm based on matrix decomposition has poor scalability in dealing with high-dimensional data, and their recommendation results are only determined according to the prediction score, resulting in low recommendation accuracy. In view of this, a nursing teaching knowledge point recommendation method based on a SOM neural network and ranking factor decomposition machine is proposed. Firstly, the SOM neural network is used to cluster users based on users’ academic background information, then the partial order relationship of nursing teaching knowledge points is constructed by using users’ explicit and implicit web access behavior, and finally, the factor decomposition machine is used as the ranking function to classify users’ academic background web access behavior, borrowing nursing teaching introduction text, and other characteristic information were modeled, and the peer-to-peer ranking learning algorithm was used to accurately recommend nursing teaching knowledge points. Experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively alleviate the problem of data sparsity and improve the accuracy and efficiency of recommendations.