Virtual Interactive Practice™: Utilising Healthcare Information Systems to Contextualise the Skills associated with Clinical Decision making within Nurse Education

M. Fieschi et al. (Eds) Amsterdam: IOS PressSkills acquisition, clinical information systems, nurse education, virtual interactive practice, simulation. The problem of skill acquisition The projected shortfall of the required numbers of health profes-sionals especially in English speaking nations, particularly amongst nurses [1,2], is being addressed in the UK mainly by a huge increase in recruitment. Today, as a direct result of staff re-organisation [3], downsizing, changing workforce, service re-configurations and the shift towards the hospital at home, students have fewer opportunities to practice and hone their clin-ical/practical skills [4]. The rise in demand for clinical skills highlighted this is not always achievable due to lack of parity of experience within practice. The establishment of virtual reality in learning clinical nursing skills The rapidly changing health care environment, adult learning theory and emphasis on accountability has helped enable educa-tion and practice providers to move away from didactic instruc-tion [10] to a more interactive problem based learning environment. The utilisation of virtual reality (VR) is becoming established in nurse education [11,12] with a steady growth in the use of virtual reality in health care education and training generally over the past decade [13]. The terminology surrounding VR can however be deceptive