At the Duke University School of Medicine, students may soon be assigned an avatar in a virtual hospital setting and tasked with different patient care responsibilities. Dr. Jeff Taekman, in partnership with Virtual Heroes (a local company that develops “serious games” for training), is investigating a prototype game where students’ avatars work with other clinicians to take care of virtual patients, to practice working as a team. Read more about this project Inside Duke Medicine.
In a similar game, Virtual Peace, student avatars negotiate to provide effective aid in a natural disaster scenario. Virtual peace was designed for international humanitarian aid education, by an interdisciplinary collaboration including the Duke-UNC Rotary Center for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution, Virtual Heroes, Duke’s Visual Studies Initiative, Computer Science Department, and the Program for Information Science + Information Studies. See Virtual Peace in video.
Another virtual environment project in medical education is the Duke School of Nursing in Second Life, to reach Duke’s nursing students across the US. Read more and watch a video at the Duke University School of Nursing.