Building a virtual community for nursing education: the town of Mirror Lake.

RNs take pride in delivering high-quality individualized care to their patients. However, how do nursing students learn the principles of professional nursing or develop the competencies necessary to individualize patient care? At the Ohio State University College of Nursing, we embarked on deploying a virtual community of patients to enhance our students' learning experience. Our community, the town of Mirror Lake, contains 165 people and 62 households, with an apartment complex, a medical center, and a retirement center with assisted and skilled nursing care.

Implementation of handheld devices.

With the rapid introduction of technology in nursing education, information regarding its implementation in undergraduate curricula is emerging. The authors describe the implementation process used to integrate personal digital assistants into an undergraduate nursing curriculum. Barriers such as potential for device loss, issues related to patient confidentiality, and infection control are addressed.