Bringing Community Health Nursing Education to Life with Serious Games.

The ever changing needs of society have created a much needed shift in health care delivery from that of hospital to community. However, the role and process of community health nursing is foreign to most nursing students as the majority of nursing curricula continue to relate experiences and examples of nursing to the more familiar role of 'nurse clinician.' In contrast to undergraduate nursing programs where the use of simulation and technology has been widely adopted to emphasize the role of the nurse clinician, the use of such technology hasn't been widely used to address the learning needs of community health nursing students. Here, we present a descriptive paper on the development of an interactive, virtual learning environment (serious game) for acquisition of community health nursing skills. The serious game primarily presents a learner-centered, experiential learning and problem-based learning approach, addressing the learning needs of today's students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]