Medication dosage calculation among nursing students: does digital technology make a difference? A literature review

BACKGROUND: Patient safety is a major part of nursing care and following patients’ medication orders is considered one of the greatest responsibilities of individual nurses and nursing Failure to make safe drug calculations poses serious risks to patient safety. It is therefore important to strengthen nursing students’ numeracy skills and conceptual abilities during their education. Research suggests that digital technologies play an increasingly important role in promoting nursing students’ knowledge and medication dosage calculation (MDC) skills. The present review aims to identify and critically evaluate research investigating how the use of digital technologies informs the development of nursing students’ MDC skills. METHODS: A systematic literature review was performed within Scopus (Elsevier), Academic Search Elite (Ebsco), Cinahl (Ebsco), ERIC (Ebsco), Web of Science and PubMed. Research papers on MDC using digital technologies were considered for inclusion. Starting from 2843 sources, eighteen research articles met the inclusion criteria. RESULTS: The results show that use of digital technologies can reduce nursing students’ medication errors. Interestingly, web-based courses were the most commonly used digital technologies aimed at developing nursing students’ MDC skills. However, such courses had limited impacts the development of these skills. CONCLUSION: The present review concludes by mapping the current knowledge gaps and making suggestions for further research. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12912-022-00904-3.