Second Life Patient Scenarios: Enhancing the Diversity of the Nursing Profession

Despite the current transformation of the U.S. population to one of increased diversity, the majority of nurses employed are from White backgrounds. In addition, few secondary school students from ethnically diverse backgrounds or from rural regions in the nation are encouraged to pursue a collegiate education or to consider nursing as a career. This article describes an innovative 3-year program in which one rural university in the southeast used a virtual environment, Second Life, to expose secondary students to nursing through role-playing as avatars interacting with patient case scenarios. Secondary school science and health occupations teachers developed patient and environmental scenarios under the direction of the nursing program director and the information technology director from the university. Throughout the 3 years, 300 rural and multicultural students were exposed to virtual world health care learning through quizzes with five patient case and environmental scenarios. Student and teacher evaluations were positive about their interest in learning obtained through the patient case examinations. Technical difficulties during Year 1 were eliminated by Year 3. This program demonstrates that use of virtual technologies such as Second Life may increase the interest of secondary rural and multicultural students in careers in nursing and in pursuing a collegiate education.