Our Medication Calculation Competency course has been updated and separated into two courses to target specific scopes of practice
Calculating medication doses and performing numeric conversions is a skill that health professionals must prove annually to be able to practice in their chosen field. But what happens when a nursing professional calculates the wrong dosage?
Calculating medication correctly is crucial. Too much of one drug, or not enough of another, can make someone seriously ill or even lead to death. Getting medication calculation right means improving the quality of life of people in your care! But administering medication isn’t always about providing patients with the right amounts of tablets – nursing staff are frequently required to administer medication intravenously.
In 2020, the Nursing and Midwifery board produced a fact sheet on the administration of medication that stated “Employers must ensure that they are satisfied that employees are educated, competent and confident for any nursing activity they undertake.[1]” Kineo remains committed to ensuring learners are competent and confident in performing their work.
Following industry engagement, some of our clients and their learners provided feedback that informed us that some nurses are not IV endorsed and are therefore not permitted to administer or use IVs in their workplace. As such, as they do not know how to perform IV calculations they shouldn’t be tested on it. By splitting Medication Calculation Competency into two courses, one including IV assessment and the other excluding IV assessment, we are confident we can fully accommodate the broad range of our learners in healthcare.
Medication Calculation Competency (Unit ID 11524) has been separated into two new courses: Medication Calculations Competency Including IV Therapy (Unit ID 33732) and Medication Calculations Competency (Unit ID 33733).
Features
These courses are rigorous compliance-achieving assessments to ensure learners are competent at:
- performing metric calculations and conversions
- calculating tablet and capsule doses, and
- calculating liquid medications.
In addition, the Medication Calculations Competency includes intravenous (IV) therapy course includes a topic on calculating IV fluid volumes and rates.
Learners must achieve a 100% pass rate on all topics to successfully complete the courses.
These courses have been reviewed by Melissa Sinfield, a recognised subject matter expert in this space.
- Current Unit ID: 11524
Medication Calculations Competency Including IV Therapy
- New Unit ID: 33732
- Duration: 20 minutes
Medication Calculations Competency
- New Unit ID: 33733
- Duration: 15 minutes
[1] Nursing and Midwifery Board, AHPRA, Fact sheet: Enrolled nurses and medicine administration, https://www.nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au/codes-guidelines-statements/faq/enrolled-nurses-and-medicine-administration.aspx, accessed September 2021