This innovative workbook/CD-ROM package helps bridge the gap between the classroom and the real world by teaching students about clinical settings and critical thinking before they actually start clinical rotations - making the transition from nursing student to caregiver a smoother process. A guided learning experience, VCE features textbook reading assignments that correspond with the CD-ROM and workbook activities. The workbook acts as a map, guiding students through the CD-ROM as they care for patients in the virtual hospital, making connections between what they experience in the virtual hospital and what they learn in the textbook. Throughout each lesson, students access realistic information resources essential to patient care, resulting in a true-to-life, hands-on learning experience. Promotes active learning as students identify information to collect and process data for evidence-based patient care. Exposes students to realistic information resources - such as the EPR, MAR, and extensive Charts - to prepare them for data management and decision-making on the floor. Improves core computing skills as students access and evaluate the diverse hospital databases. Reinforces the precepts of safe medication administration as students select, prepare, and administer medications in a harm-free environment.

Augments knowledge of physical assessment by allowing students to examine and record vital signs, head & neck, chest, back & spine, upper extremities, abdomen, pelvic, and lower extremities. Fully integrates the psychosocial aspect of nursing through nurse-client interaction videos, underscoring the psychosocial component of patient care. Includes over 250 NCLEX® examination-style questions that offer built-in testing of clinical knowledge. New flash-based technology allows more ease of use, featuring seamless one-click navigation, no plug-ins, and automatic installations. The cases in VCE are all new along with new patient data in the Electronic Patient Record, Patient Charts, KARDEX, and Medication Administration Record. A new medication room simulates what students will encounter in practice or in a real clinical setting. Over 55 embedded medication administration errors force students to think critically about safe medication practices and follow safe medication standards. Students can now sign in for multiple patients as a nurse would in practice.

A new Medication Scorecard provides instant feedback on correctly and incorrectly administered medications. A new Examination Report checklist tracks performance on baseline and focused assessments. Students now have the ability to "take a break" - leaving the software at anytime and picking up where they left off without losing any information. New workbook icons for time show approximately how long it will take to complete a particular exercise. Workbook icons for linked activities indicate that a particular exercise is linked to another exercise and cannot be completed independently.