Charles Darwin University in Australia's Northern Territory has established a virtual, interactive teaching hospital environment where remote student nurses can test their decision making skills before working in a real hospital, Australian IT reports.
The virtual hospital, which is expected to begin running in the second semester of 2007, will allow students to care for simulated patients from the triage in the emergency department through the definitive treatment and discharge.
Isabelle Ellis, the university's head of nursing and health care practice, said the program will help "nearly 1,000 students from around Australia -- with many of them in rural or remote areas -- and this really gives them the solid nursing background that you would expect in a face-to-face environment."
Charles Darwin University is one of two Australian universities to offer a nursing degree through external studies, although it is different because it is "a case-based learning environment," Ellis said (Foreshew, Australian IT, 6/5).