University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada.
Nurs Philos. 2011 Jul;12(3):200-13. doi: 10.1111/j.1466-769X.2011.00493.x.
Within the literature that circulates in the discourses organizing nursing education, there are embedded assumptions that link student performance on maths examinations to safe medication practices. These assumptions are rooted historically. They fundamentally shape educational approaches assumed to support safe practice and protect patients from nursing error. Here, we apply an institutional ethnographic lens to the body of literature that both supports and critiques the emphasis on numeracy skills and medication safety. We use this form of inquiry to open an alternate interrogation of these practices. Our main argument posits that numeracy skills serve as powerful distraction for both students and teachers. We suggest that they operate under specious claims of safety and objectivity. As nurse educators, we are captured by taken-for-granted understandings of practices intended to produce safety. We contend that some of these practices are not congruent with how competency actually unfolds in the everyday world of nursing practice. Ontologically grounded in the materiality of work processes, we suggest there is a serious disjuncture between educators' assessment and evaluation work where it links into broad nursing assumptions about medication work. These underlying assumptions and work processes produce contradictory tensions for students, teachers and nurses in direct practice.
在组织护理教育的论述中流通的文献中，存在着一些隐含的假设，将学生在数学考试中的表现与安全用药实践联系起来。这些假设具有历史根源。它们从根本上塑造了被认为支持安全实践并保护患者免受护理错误影响的教育方法。在这里，我们应用制度民族志的视角来审视支持和批评强调计算能力和药物安全的文献。我们使用这种形式的探究来对这些实践进行另一种质疑。我们的主要论点是，计算能力技能既是学生又是教师的有力干扰因素。我们认为，它们在安全和客观性的虚假主张下运作。作为护士教育者，我们被旨在产生安全的实践的既定理解所束缚。我们认为，其中一些实践与护理实践的日常世界中能力的实际展开并不一致。从工作过程的物质性出发，我们认为，教育工作者的评估和评价工作与护理人员对药物工作的广泛假设之间存在严重脱节。这些潜在的假设和工作过程给直接实践中的学生、教师和护士带来了矛盾的紧张局势。
