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

Tracking the progress of pre-registration nursing students' medication dosage calculation problemsolving(MDC-PS) competence development is critical both to ensure achievement of professional andregulatory requirements and to evaluate the validity and reliability of nursing education preparationprogrammes. This paper focuses on the outcomes of a three-year professional healthcare educationevaluation study that tracked the progress of 210 nursing students following the foundation programmeand child, adult, mental health and learning disability branch programmes of a UK undergraduate preregistrationnursing degree programme.Outcome measures indicated that despite many students displaying a range of arithmetical deficits onentry to the undergraduate programme, exposure to the safeMedicate environment and practice basedlearning 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 authenticlearning and diagnostic assessment environment, and.2. MDC-PS functional competence (know-how and skills) via successful completion of allmedicines management and MDC-PS Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) competenciesin practice based competency assessments.