Editorial

This issue of Literacy and Numeracy Studies: An international journal in the education and training of adults marks the 21st volume of the journal, previously published as Open Letter: Australian Journal for Adult Literacy Research and Practice

Developing nursing competence:Future proofing nurses for the changing practice requirements of 21st century healthcare

There's a conundrum that is taxing us at the moment – how can we see into the future to know what we need to know, to be prepared for things to come? Obviously none of us has the actual ability to ‘see’ into the future, but we are very good at distilling trends from the past, projecting them forwards and developing plans for action in the here and now. We try to create what Alvin Toffler calls ‘time spanners’ – things to connect us to the future (Toffler, 1970). However, the further we move away from today, the more uncertain we become about our predictions and our ability to cope: our spanners are too short. We can see elements of this conundrum in the preamble to the UK Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) draft Standards of Proficiency for Registered Nurses, the council stated that: “Registered nurses provide care to people at every stage of life across all care settings. They work in the context of continual change, challenging environments, growing diversity and rapidly evolving technologies. It is therefore essential that they are equipped with the knowledge, confidence and transferrable skills needed to respond to these demands. (NMC, 2017, p.3)

Safety first: combining task models of medical devices with numeracy skills and technical competence

We propose that by more closely aligning interdisciplinary work in (a) numeracy education for medication dosage calculations and (b) model-driven design for medical devices that are used for delivery of medication we may help address the incident-rate in incorrect medication calculations and delivery, given that such devices commonly require the user to engage with numerical information via a digital interface. We demonstrate the use of task models as a way of supporting safe, effective and efficient delivery of medication to the patient, taking as our example the use of infusion and syringe pumps in Nursing. This work indicates a new way of facilitating knowledge transfer between numeracy education and medical device design and usage, using task models. We aim to support medical professionals’ and students’ numeracy education as well as to inform the design of medical devices based on a better understanding of the use and potential errors of medication delivery by trained professionals