Purpose: The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the effectiveness of bladder training prior to removing short-term indwelling urinary catheters (IUC). Method: A systematic review followed PRISMA and NECA’s guidelines. We searched seven different electronic databases; PubMed, Ovid-MEDILINE, Cochrane Library, CINAHL, KISS, KoreaMed, KMBASE for interventions studies published between January 1980 and June 2020. Only bladder training comparative studies upon adult patients with IUC within 14 days in an acute care setting were included. The quality of the studies was assessed using Cochrane’s Risk of Bias for randomized controlled trials and RoBANS for non-randomized studies. Result: Nine trial studies included according to the inclusion criteria. Total 903 patients from the selected studies were included in the meta-analysis with RevMan. No significant difference of effects was found in both reduction rate of urinary retention (OR 0.75, 95% CI 0.26 to 2.18) and incidence of re-catheterization (OR 0.82, 95%CI 0.50 to 1.34) between the intervention group with bladder training and the control with free drainage. Conclusion: There was no clear evidence to suggest any benefits from bladder training prior to short term IUC removal.