A survey of the teaching and learning of biological sciences on undergraduate nursing courses

Curriculum planners developing degree courses in nursing have to decide how much time to allocate to each of the academic disciplines including biological sciences. There is no research-based evidence to suggest what depth and detail of knowledge of biological sciences is required to support nursing practice. There is also some debate about the teaching methods used and who should teach the biological sciences. This paper reports the results of a small survey investigating the teaching of biological sciences on 16 nursing degree courses in the UK. The survey uncovered great variation in the number of hours spent on biological sciences in the different universities and in the science entry requirements of the different universities. Most teachers of biological sciences had a first degree in the subject but few were nurses. The possible implications of these findings are discussed. Problems associated with shared learning and didactic teaching methods are also highlighted. Although the biological sciences input will largely be a matter of institutional preferences, nursing needs to develop a research-based framework to aid curriculum planning.