Meeting the mathematical demands of the safety-critical workplace: Medication dosage calculation problem-solving for nursing

This article addresses a key issue for mathematics educators preparing students for work: How should teaching, learning and assessment be designed to meet the mathematical demands of the workplace, especially when those demands are safety-critical? We explore this question through a discussion of our interdisciplinary research on numeracy for nursing, focusing in particular on the characterization and authentic assessment of competence in medication dosage calculation problem-solving, where errors can and do cause patient morbidity and mortality.