Effect of exposure to asynchronous virtual clinical environments on actual/perceived competence in medication dosage calculation: A pilot study

Introduction: Nursing students are expected to be ‘practice ready’ on qualifying. This includes safe medication administration. This pilot study investigates the relationship between exposure duration to asynchronous virtual drug dosage calculation scenarios and nursing student actual and perceived competence. Methodology design planned for larger scale main study was tested and piloted. Methods: A randomised quasi-experimental research design (pre- and post-test) was used. Purposive sampling was used to recruit six groups of second/third-year pre-registration undergraduate nursing students from six sites (UK and Canada). Students were randomly assigned to four groups of different exposure to the safeMedicate® COVID-19 education module. Results: Student actual competence increased across all four groups, and their perceived competence mirrored this. There was no clear dose-response relationship demonstrated. Conclusion: Valuable insights into the effects of asynchronous virtual learning on drug dosage calculation competence among nursing students were generated. Improvement in actual and perceived competence was found, but no clear dose-response relationship. Further research on a larger scale is needed to explore the impact of instructional design, feedback, and interaction on learning outcomes.