Safety in numbers 6: Tracking pre-registration nursing students' cognitive and functional competence development in medication dosage calculation problem-solving: The role of authentic learning and diagnostic assessment environments

Tracking the progress of pre-registration nursing students' medication dosage calculation problem-solving (MDC-PS) competence development is critical both to ensure achievement of professional and regulatory requirements and to evaluate the validity and reliability of nursing education preparation programmes. This paper focuses on the outcomes of a three-year professional healthcare education evaluation study that tracked the progress of 210 nursing students following the foundation programme and child, adult, mental health and learning disability branch programmes of a UK undergraduate pre-registration nursing degree programme.Outcome measures indicated that despite many students displaying a range of arithmetical deficits on entry to the undergraduate programme, exposure to the safeMedicate environment and practice based learning environments facilitated all 210 participants demonstration of:1.MDC-PS cognitive competence (knowing that and why) via scoring 100% in the Branch (field specific) Authentic Diagnostic Assessment (ADA) of the safeMedicate authentic learning and diagnostic assessment environment, and.2.MDC-PS functional competence (know-how and skills) via successful completion of all medicines management and MDC-PS Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) competencies in practice based competency assessments.