Determination of Senior Nursing Students’ Mathematical Perception Skills and Pediatric Medication Calculation Performance
Determination of Senior Nursing Students’ Mathematical Perception Skills and Pediatric Medication Calculation Performance
Aim: Math skills in the health field are often used to calculate drug dosage and liquid quantity, body massand cost analysis. The aim of this research is to determine the senior nursing students’ mathematicalperception skills and pediatric medication calculation performance.Method: The population of this descriptive cross-sectional research is composed of 103 nursing studentsin attending a state university in Izmir, Turkey. Of the 103 nursing students, 97 who answered all thequestions comprised the study sample. All the participants took one-month training in the pediatricclinics during the last year of their education. The data were collected using the “Personal InformationForm and Mathematics Perception, Information and Pediatric Drug Calculator Skills Survey” developedby the researchers by reviewing the literature.Results: The mean age of the study participants was 22.24±0.89. Of them, 76.3% were female, 23.7%completed their Pediatric Internship Training in the pediatric inpatient units or the Pediatric IntensiveCare Unit (PICU), 68% thought that their basic mathematics knowledge was adequate, and %30 stated thattheir dosage calculation, solution preparation and drug preparation skills were insufficient. In addition,the rate of the correct answers they gave to the questions on percentages, fractions and conversionswas low.Conclusion: In the drug application process; not only practical skills, but also the theoretical knowledgeshould be considered. A nurse’s responsibility does not end once he/she administers medication. Beingcareful throughout the entire process is one of the nurse’s legal and ethical responsibilities. In this study,the students’ drug calculation skills were inadequate
___
- Andrew, S., Salamonson, Y., & Halcomb, E. J. (2009). Nursing
students’ confidence in medication calculations predicts
math exam performance. Nurse Education Today, 29(2),
217-223. [CrossRef]
- Aştı, T., & Kıvanç, M. M. (2003). Nurses ınformation and
application related to the administration of oral medication.
Atatürk Üniversitesi Hemşirelik Yüksekokulu Dergisi, 6(3),1-9.
- Bifftu, B. B., Dachew, B. A., Tiruneh, B. T., & Beshah, D. T. (2016).
Medication administration error reporting and associated
factors among nurses working at the University of Gondar
referral hospital, Northwest Ethiopia, 2015. BMC Nursing,
15(1), 43. [CrossRef]
- Eastwood, K. J., Boyle, M. J., Williams, B., & Fairhall, R. (2011).
Numeracy skills of nursing students. Nurse Education Today,
31(8), 815-818. [CrossRef]
- Elliott, M., & Joyce, J. (2005). Mapping drug calculation skills in
an undergraduate nursing curriculum. Nurse Education in
Practice, 5(4), 225-229. [CrossRef]
- Feleke, S. A., Mulatu, M. A., & Yesmaw, Y. S. (2015). Medication
administration error: magnitude and associated factors
among nurses in Ethiopia. BMC Nursing, 14(1), 53. [CrossRef]
- Grandell-Niemi, H., Hupli, M., Puukka, P., & Leino-Kilpi, H. (2006).
Finnish nurses’ and nursing students’ mathematical skills.
Nurse Education Today, 26(2), 151-161. [CrossRef]
- Grandell-Niemi, H., Hupli, M., Leino-Kilpi, H., & Puukka, P. (2003).
Medication calculation skills of nurses in Finland. Journal of
Clinical Nursing, 12(4), 519-528. [CrossRef]
- Harvey, S., Murphy, F., Lake, R., Jenkins, L., Cavanna, A., & Tait, M.
(2010). Diagnosing the problem: Using a tool to identify preregistration
nursing students’ mathematical ability. Nurse
Education in Practice, 10(3), 119-125. [CrossRef]
- Hutton, M. (2009). Numeracy and drug calculations in practice.
Primary Health Care, 19(5), 40-46. [CrossRef]
- Jukes, L., & Gilchrist, M. (2006). Concerns about numeracy skills
of nursing students. Nurse Education in Practice, 6(4), 192-
198. [CrossRef]
- Karaca, A. & Açıköz, F. (2014). Nursing students’ drug dose
calculation skills and drug administration errors. Journal of
Anatolia Nursing and Health Sciences, 17(2), 110-116.
- Lapham, R. (2016) Drug Calculations for Nurses, 4th Edition=A
step-by-step approach, Fourth Edition. CRC Press Taylor &
Francis Group, Baco-Raton.
- Lintern, S. (2014). Concern as nurses fail drug numeracy testing.
Health Service Journal, 23, 3.
- McMullan, M., Jones, R., & Lea, S. (2010). Patient safety: Numerical skills
and drug calculation abilities of nursing students and registered
nurses. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 66(4), 891-899. [CrossRef]
- Røykenes, K., & Larsen, T. (2010). The relationship between
nursing students’ mathematics ability and their performance
in a drug calculation test. Nurse Education Today, 30(7), 697-
701. [CrossRef]
- Sneck, S., Saarnio, R., Isola, A., & Boigu, R. (2016). Medication
competency of nurses according to theoretical and drug
calculation online exams: A descriptive correlational study.
Nurse Education Today, 36, 195-201. [CrossRef]
- Stolic, S. (2014). Educational strategies aimed at improving
student nurse’s medication calculation skills: A review of the
research literature. Nurse Education in Practice, 14(5), 491-
503. [CrossRef]
- van Gijssel-Wiersma, D. G., van den Bemt, P. M., & Walenberghvan
Veen, M. C. (2005). Influence of computerised medication
charts on medication errors in a hospital. Drug safety, 28(12),
1119-1129. [CrossRef]
- Weeks, K. W., Higginson, R., Clochesy, J. M., & Coben, D.
(2013). Safety in Numbers 7: veni, vidi, duci: A grounded
theory evaluation of nursing students’ medication dosage
calculation problem-solving schemata construction. Nurse
Education in Practice, 13(2), e78-e87. [CrossRef]
- Wolf, Z. R., Hicks, R., & Serembus, J. F. (2006). Characteristics of
medication errors made by students during the administration
phase: A descriptive study. Journal of Professional Nursing,
22(1), 39-51. [CrossRef]
- Wright, K. (2005). An exploration into the most effective way
to teach drug calculation skills to nursing students. Nurse
Education Today, 25(6), 430-436. [CrossRef]
- Wright, K. (2007). Student nurses need more than maths to
improve their drug calculating skills. Nurse Education Today,
27(4), 278-285. [CrossRef]