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OBJECTIVES The aim of this meta-analysis was to assess the effectiveness of evidence-based nursing (EBN) on the development of critical thinking for nursing students. DESIGN A systematic literature review of original studies on randomized controlled trials was conducted. DATA SOURCES The relevant randomized controlled trials were retrieved from multiple electronic databases including Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health (CINAHL), Chinese BioMed Database (CBM), China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and WanFang Database. REVIEW METHODS In order to make a systematic evaluation, studies were selected according to inclusion and exclusion criteria, and then according to extracted data and assessed quality. The data extraction was completed by two independent reviewers, and the methodological quality assessment was completed by another two reviewers. All of the data was analyzed by the software RevMan5.3. RESULTS A total of nine studies with 1079 nursing students were chosen in this systematic literature review. The result of this meta-analysis showed that the effectiveness of evidence-based nursing was superior to that of traditional teaching on nursing students' critical thinking. CONCLUSION The results of this meta-analysis indicate that evidence-based nursing could help nursing students to promote their development of critical thinking. More researches with higher quality and larger sample size can be analyzed in the further.