We were very interested to see this pre-print publication copy of Walker et al’s Australian paper on nurse education leaders’ perspectives on the teaching of numeracy to undergraduate nursing students. As you know, this is a subject close to our hearts and is a prime mover for our work in developing the safeHANDS programme.

The paper is useful in that it echoes the global perspective on nursing numeracy from an Australian perspective, and helps us to broaden our view. When we talk with educators from around the world they often think that their country is somehow different from others regarding healthcare numeracy and nursing, and is the only one facing this problem. Our work suggests that it is a global phenomena not restricted to one country or one school education system.

We were interested to read that Walker et al highlight the lack of standardisation on numeracy standards by Australian nursing regulators and the problems with idiosyncratic teaching and assessment modes. Again, this is something we see in many different settings. This is built on the incorrect assumption that nursing students are numerate on entry to undergraduate/pre-registration nurse education programmes because they’ve reached a set level in their school leaving qualifications. Our work shows that just because a person passed the maths exam at school doesn’t mean that they have the required competence in numeracy to be a safe practitioner.

We agree with Walker et al that there is an urgent need for an international benchmark in nursing/healthcare numeracy and we would suggest that the work we have done in developing safeHANDS would be a good starting point. We acknowledge the problem of nurse educators not being maths educators, yet being required to support nursing numeracy development but we have reservations about handing over this aspect of nurse education to non-nurses. In our conversations with colleagues in the USA from the High-Quality Mathematical Preparation for Nurses Task Force (Dana Center Mathematics Pathways 2019; 2020; Ozimek, Kelch & Zoellner, 2021) we noted that maths educators have a different but equally limited idea of what maths nurses need to be safe and competent.

We look forward to continuing conversations about these issues and welcome contributions from our colleagues from around the world.

Numeric Generics R&D Team

Refs

Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (2020). Creating Mathematics Consistency and

Relevancy in Nursing Programs. https://www.dcpathfinder.org/creatingmathematics-consistency-relevancy-nursing/

Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (2019). Emerging Solutions in Mathematics Education for Nursing (9): https://dcmathpathways.org/sites/default/files/resources/2019-11/DCMP-Emerging-Solutions-Brief-NURSING-20191105.pdf

Ozimek, D., Kelch, B. & Zoellner, J. (2021). Convening Recommendations: Math and statistics education for nurses. Austin, TX: Dana Center. https://dcpathfinder.org