Nursing student perceptions of pharmacology education and safe medication administration: A qualitative research study

‘There need to be a balance’: Mental health nurses’ perspectives on medication education in university and clinical practice

“…The educational institution has a responsibility in curriculum development, integration of theory and practice, and in ensuring the development of nurse students' medication competence. While research into the role of the nurses' educational institution as a learning environment for medication is limited (Sulosaari et al ), it has been reported that students often find it difficult to translate information covered in education settings into clinical practice (Preston et al ). The clinical setting is an ideal setting to facilitate students to think critically, to apply their didactic learning, and to bridge the practice–theory gap of medication education.…”

“…The clinical setting is an ideal setting to facilitate students to think critically, to apply their didactic learning, and to bridge the practice–theory gap of medication education. It is important to ensure there are strong working relationships between the classroom and clinical instruction (Preston et al ). Although some participants voiced dissatisfaction about their role in educating students about medication, preceptors play a key role in educating students about medication (Benner ; Koharchik & Flavin ).…”

“…However, there is evidence to suggest that newly graduated mental health nurses do not know enough basic principles of pharmacology (Dilles et al, 2011;Goodwin et al 2019). Although nursing education is built on a close relationship between theory and clinical experience (Esmaeili et al 2014), there is a lack of consensus as to how best to integrate pharmacology content into nursing programmes to bridge the theory-practice gap (Preston et al 2019).…”

“…However, research has identified that university settings sometimes facilitate only a narrow focus on medication calculation skills, overlooking other competency areas, such as medication administration and service user education skills (Sulosaari et al ). However, there is a lack of consensus as to how best to integrate pharmacology content into nursing programs (Preston et al ). Furthermore, students have reported medication education to be lacking in varied teaching–learning methods and found it to be monotonous, with no active learning component (Devi et al ).…”

The space to make mistakes: allocating responsibility and accountability for nursing student-committed medication errors

“…Various authors have indicated that high rates of student-committed medication errors are a key reason why an "urgent" (Gill et al, 2019, p. 16) Manias & Bullock, 2002b). Students also indicate that the depth of pharmacology knowledge they expect to retain is minimal because the classroom focus is on memorizing lists of drugs and their attributes rather than acquiring an in-depth understanding of how and why the medications work clinically (Manias & Bullock, 2002a, 2002bPreston et al, 2019).…”