Introduction:

The current challenges pose developing self-regulated learning in health sciences students to prepare them for a changing and globalized world, considering that they are in charge of people's lives.

Objective:

To characterize the quantitative empirical research on self-regulated learning in health science students.

Methods:

A systematic review of the literature was carried out in the Web of Science (WOS), Scopus and SciELO databases from 2014 to 2019. We selected 29 out of 149 articles found.

Results:

Europe and Asia were the continents with the highest frequency of publications. The most significant findings were the non-experimental design, the use of motivational questionnaire, the learning strategies, and sample sizes of 51 to 100 and 501 to 1000. The medicine and nursing trainings were found to study self-regulated learning the most. The variables with the highest frequency were sociodemographic and those student-related. Problem-based learning in an intracurricular format was the most widely used methodology to develop it. The main limitations reported were related to the instrument and the sample.

Conclusions:

It is necessary to research in South America and to establish alliances with other countries in the region, in addition to overcoming methodological limitations. It is suggested to carry out quasi-experimental designs and investigate affective, social and cultural variables that could influence self-regulated learning. Active methodologies should be permanently included in the study plans as there is evidence of their effectiveness. All health sciences studies are invited to advance in this area.

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