Pharmacology content in pre-registration curricula: evidence to support implementation

Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) standards for pre-registration nursing and prescribing programmes were published in 2019 and, in the context of pharmacology and prescribing, there were two significant changes (NMC, 2019a; 2019b). First, registrants can progress to a prescribing qualification earlier in their career and second, pharmacology and prescribing preparedness in pre-registration programmes is a requirement for all fields of nursing practice. This standardised approach to pharmacology is aligned to recommendations from the Biosciences Quality Assurance Framework (B-QAF) (BiNE, 2016) and aims to:

This research roundup will provide an overview of the research and opinion relating to pharmacological knowledge and teaching approaches in pre-registration and post-qualifying nurses. A keyword search of CINAHL, MEDLINE and Emerald databases yielded four articles, of which one was an opinion paper, and the remainder primary research. Two surveyed adult pre-registration and post-qualifying students (Khan and Hood, 2018; Preston et al, 2018), one paediatric post-qualifying students (Lan et al, 2014) and the opinion paper was related to mental health nursing (Pearson et al, 2018). The search did not yield any research relating specifically to learning disability nursing.