Summary

To know the state of the art is to be aware of the background and not to repeat what has already been said before, and use it as a starting point. Finding out the development of the subject that interests us is not an easy task. Today the literature review is done from anywhere. We have access to catalogs of publications, to automated databases. The bibliographic searches of topics produce in a few seconds a number of references that it is not possible to review thoroughly. It is not easy to choose what to read.

Digital databases are becoming like the needle the haystack of the old story, which in the case of science, it is mandatory to find. We face this new reality when reviewing the issues that make up the axes of analysis of this review: nursing education and addictions?

The search aims to find the proposals of curricular models that account for the results by incorporating the topic of addictions in the nursing curriculum, to draw the boundaries of professional work in this area; or at least, find concepts and applicable evidence to get to build a proposal to do so. Some tools and steps were designed to decide how and what to read that would be useful to other researchers; especially for students or professionals starting literature review