Please cite this article as: Dyson, S.E., Liu, L., van den Akker, O., O'Driscoll, M., The extent, variability, and attitudes towards volunteering among undergradute nursing students: Implications for pedagogy in nursing and midifery education, Nurse Education in Practice (2017Practice ( ), doi: 10.1016Practice ( /j.nepr.2017 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. M A N U S C R I P T A C C E P T E D ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT INTRODUCTIONNurses working within the National Health Service (NHS) require critical thinking skills in order to cope with severely ill patients with complex care needs, to deal with rapidly changing situations, and to do so with care with compassion. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) expect undergraduate nursing programmes to prepare nurses to think critically, while at the same time offering limited strategies for the educational development of such skills (Banning, 2006). A lack of consensus around a definition of, and ways of teaching critical thinking has resulted in a proliferation of strategies for the development of critical thinking skills in nursing programmes, for example case studies (Popil, 2011), reflective practice (Caldwell and Grobbel, 2013), and critical reading and writing (Heaslip, 2008). A less well understood strategy for the development of critical thinking in nursing is student volunteering, despite the view that volunteering is thought to promote students' selfesteem and to enhance the development of critical thinking (Moore and Parker, 2008). While self-esteem and critical thinking skills are synonymous with nursing and with volunteering, literature concerned with volunteering in nursing programmes appears limited. The paucity of literature may be due in part to programme requirements determined by the standards for preregistration nursing education (NMC, 2010), which leave limited time for the inclusion of extracurricular activities. In light of this, our study aimed to understand the extent, variability and attitudes towards volunteering among nursing students at our University. Our primary research question was to establish the extent of volunteering in a subsection of the student nurse population. Our secondary research question was to understand the attitudes of our nursing students towards volunteering, in order that we might make recommendations for the nursing curriculum. M A N U S C R I P T A C C E P T E D ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT 2 BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE Student VolunteeringVolunteering, in and of itself is considered a mutually beneficial relationship or exchange rather than a gift, with considerable evidence of health and wellbeing ben...