Student Nurses and Mathematics

For the safety of the public, it is essential that nurses are competent at least in the mathematics that enables them to calculate medications accurately. From a survey by G. Hek (1994), it is apparent that mathematics is not universally included in the nursing curricula, nor asked for as a pre-requisite to entry. Changes in the profile of the typical student nurse from a school leaver with 5 '0 ' levels to a more mature woman with often fewer school qualifications have been one of the triggers for this study into student nurses and mathematics. In this paper, students ' feelings about mathematics are explored and related to age, time elapsed since leaving school, and performance on a test of nursing mathematics. Provision for revision and mathematics support is described and the results of a post-test are analyzed. The results indicate that pre-registration nursing courses should include an element of mathematics to alert students to their own shortcomings and provide a means to improve their computational skills before working in the clinical areas. (Contains 14 references.) (Author/ASK) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document