Maths Week 2024:
Helping healthcare
workers with numeracy

By Dundee & Angus College

Numeracy may not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about a career in healthcare, but it’s a critical skill for professionals in the field. From calculating medication dosages to interpreting data, strong numeracy skills are essential for patient care.

Four people are sitting at a long desk, each using a desktop computer. Two of them are chatting while writing on red paper folders.

At Dundee & Angus College, we recognise the importance of these skills and have developed our Numeracy in Healthcare programme at SCQF level 5, with 2 credit points, to support learners in gaining the confidence and skills needed to excel in their healthcare careers.

New courses

As part of our commitment to deliver education that meets the needs of industry, we launched our Numeracy in Healthcare courses in conjunction with Multiply.

Multiply is the new UK Government £559 million programme to help transform the lives of adults across the UK, by improving their functional numeracy skills through free personal tutoring, digital training, and flexible courses. This transformational programme focuses on elevating knowledge and understanding of maths skills to enrich the lives of learners. The initiative will run over the next three years through bespoke programmes and significantly boost functional numeracy levels across the UK.

Dundee and Angus College logo in purple and blue

Flexible learning

Our interactive, online programme is designed to fit around the busy schedules of healthcare professionals and learners, with 15 to 20 hours of independent learning with tutor support.

The course uses industry-specific materials to cover essential topics such as the calculation of drug dosage, unit rates and conversions, and working with graphs and charts that can be studied remotely at a time and place that suit the needs of our learners.

With a range of practical examples and assessments, this course enables learners to demonstrate their abilities in the application of a range of numerical skills in everyday situations in healthcare.

The benefits

Our Numeracy in Healthcare programme is designed for individuals looking to strengthen their numeracy skills before starting a nursing course at university or for those who are already working in or pursuing a career in healthcare.

This course comes highly recommended by local universities as an entrance requirement for nursing-related programmes, making it an essential step for anyone aiming to enter the field.

The benefits of this course go beyond just academic preparation, it provides learners with numeracy skills that are crucial in healthcare to prevent errors that could lead to patient harm and ensure compliance with health and safety regulations.

Numeracy is a fundamental skill for many healthcare roles and our course provides a platform for learners to become more confident in managing industry tasks such as medication, equipment, and time more effectively. Mastering these skills boosts professional competence and confidence to enable learners to excel in their roles and open doors to further career progression in the healthcare industry.

Recognised qualifications

The Numeracy in Healthcare programme is SCQF credit rated to ensure that it meets the needs of national standards and follows quality assurance processes to provide credibility and legitimacy of qualifications. This standardised framework allows qualifications to be easily compared across institutions and sectors, giving learners confidence in the value of their studies.

The SCQF process ensures that the programme has clear learning outcomes and assessments, which support learners on their career pathways knowing that their efforts will be recognised and valued. Additionally, the SCQF credit rating gained from this course will allow students to transfer their credits towards further study or career progression, making it an excellent foundation for those looking to advance in healthcare.

For more information on studying Numeracy in Healthcare SCQF level 5 with Dundee & Angus College, visit their website.