<p>Purpose : This study aims to investigate the current situation of research into negative feelings nurses develop towards patients and measures to take against such feelings.</p><p>Methods : We searched the Ichushi Web databases, using the key terms : “nurses” and “negative feelings”, “negative emotion”, or “Geriatric Health Service Facility” published from 1985 to July 2017, and identified and analyzed forty articles related to “negative feelings” of nurses towards patients. The articles were organized by author, purpose, subject, methods, and results. The forty articles included studies that define the concept of negative feelings, and some related to scales to measure negative feelings of nurses towards patients. Further, the contents of the articles were classified for situations where negative feelings are likely to occur, the conditions preceding the occurrence of the negative feelings, the negative feelings described in the articles, situations that caused the negative feelings, and coping methods when negative feelings have been experienced.</p><p>Results and Discussion : Studies of negative feelings of nurses towards patients first appeared in 1995, since then the number of research reports on this topic has gradually increased. For classification by ward, 65% of the articles found for this study focused on nurses in psychiatry departments, and 35% were with nurses in other departments. No articles that focused on nurses working outside hospitals were located. When qualitatively analyzed, the negative feelings of nurses were categorized by the conditions preceding the occurrence of the negative feelings, the types of negative feelings, situations that caused the negative feelings, and coping methods when negative feelings have been experienced. We found only one scale, developed by Matsuura et al¹¹⁾, related to negative feelings of nurses: “Developing a negative feeling toward patient frequency scale”. It is necessary to develop scales to measure negative feelings that reflect the characteristics of nurses as reported in previous studies. As the number of quantitative studies in this topic is small, it may be difficult to conduct empirical research into this topic. However, these findings suggest the necessity to conduct empirical research into the negative feelings of nurses that identify related and influencing factors. Further, it may be desirable for nurses to be aware of the conditions leading to the development of negative feelings towards patients, and with an awareness of the negative feelings, attempt to cope with the stress as well as to try to solve the problems giving rise to the situation.</p>