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VIRTUAL CLINICAL EXCURSIONS – VERSION 1.0 The Virtual Clinical Excursions 1.0 CD-ROM contains a simulated hospital with five real patients on a medical-surgical nursing floor. The students are able to “visit” each of the patients and access and evaluate realistic information resources essential for patient care. Information resources in the virtual hospital include: charts, medical administration records, electronic patient records, video streaming of patient dialogue with nurses and other related materials. These virtual hospital resources provide an opportunity for the student to assess and analyze information, make a nursing diagnosis, draw conclusions and then plan, implement and evaluate care. The student also has access to the virtual hospital’s Website and an on-line medical library. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: An IBM-Compatible Computer, with a Pentium II processor (or equivalent) and a minimum processor speed of 300 MHz, 96 MB (minimum) or RAM, 800x600 screen size, thousands of colors, 100 MB hard drive space, 12x CD-ROM drive, Soundblaster 16 Soundcard compatible, stereo speakers or headphones, running Windows 95/98/NT 4SP5/2000 Operating System. An Apple Power PC G3 with a minimum processor speed of 300 MHz, 96 MB (minimum) of RAM, 800x600 screen size, thousands of colors, 100 MB hard drive space, 12x CD-ROM drive, stereo speakers or headphones, running MAC OS 9.04. Detailed Features: The Student: • spends a week in a virtual medical-surgical unit with five patients; • participates in clinical rotations, examining the patients’ data; • learns about the complexities of patient care as the patient data changes from day to day. The Learning Environment: • has multiple information sources that can be examined and evaluated to understand how and why care is implemented in a particular health-illness transition; • has meaningful real world problems that places the student in nursing scenarios where she can set priorities for care, collect data, analyze and inte