TY - JOUR
T1 - Educational strategies aimed at improving student nurse's medication calculation skills
T2 - A review of the research literature
AU - Stolic, Snezana
N1 - Includes bibliographical references.
PY - 2014/9
Y1 - 2014/9
N2 - Medication administration is an important and essential nursing function with the potential for dangerous consequences if errors occur. Not only must nurses understand the use and outcomes of administering medications they must be able to calculate correct dosages. Medication administration and dosage calculation education occurs across the undergraduate program for student nurses. Research highlights inconsistencies in the approaches used by academics to enhance the student nurse's medication calculation abilities. The aim of this integrative review was to examine the literature available on effective education strategies for undergraduate student nurses on medication dosage calculations. A literature search of five health care databases: Sciencedirect, Cinahl, Pubmed, Proquest, Medline to identify journal articles between 1990 and 2012 was conducted. Research articles on medication calculation educational strategies were considered for inclusion in this review. The search yielded 266 papers of which 20 meet the inclusion criteria. A total of 5206 student nurse were included in the final review. The review revealed educational strategies fell into four types of strategies; traditional pedagogy, technology, psychomotor skills and blended learning. The results suggested student nurses showed some benefit from the different strategies; however more improvements could be made. More rigorous research into this area is needed.
AB - Medication administration is an important and essential nursing function with the potential for dangerous consequences if errors occur. Not only must nurses understand the use and outcomes of administering medications they must be able to calculate correct dosages. Medication administration and dosage calculation education occurs across the undergraduate program for student nurses. Research highlights inconsistencies in the approaches used by academics to enhance the student nurse's medication calculation abilities. The aim of this integrative review was to examine the literature available on effective education strategies for undergraduate student nurses on medication dosage calculations. A literature search of five health care databases: Sciencedirect, Cinahl, Pubmed, Proquest, Medline to identify journal articles between 1990 and 2012 was conducted. Research articles on medication calculation educational strategies were considered for inclusion in this review. The search yielded 266 papers of which 20 meet the inclusion criteria. A total of 5206 student nurse were included in the final review. The review revealed educational strategies fell into four types of strategies; traditional pedagogy, technology, psychomotor skills and blended learning. The results suggested student nurses showed some benefit from the different strategies; however more improvements could be made. More rigorous research into this area is needed.
KW - Educational strategies
KW - Integrative review
KW - Medication calculation
KW - Student nurse
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U2 - 10.1016/j.nepr.2014.05.010
DO - 10.1016/j.nepr.2014.05.010
M3 - Review article
C2 - 25001180
AN - SCOPUS:84939421483
VL - 14
SP - 491
EP - 503
JO - Nurse Education in Practice
JF - Nurse Education in Practice
SN - 1471-5953
IS - 5
ER -