Kia ora.  After several weeks of development the new Medical Centre is starting to take shape.  Most of the ‘build’ to date has been around the design and physical structure.  For those interested in SL building, this very large structure (50×50x50 metres) was made with mega-prims and required less than 50 prims.  This did not include the interior walls, etc…but is a substantial savings in precious prims.  Although many site report that the use of such mega-prims causes serious lag (slowdown) in the site, we have not found this to be the case.

This site will house several simulations related to medicine, surgery, nursing, psychology, and disaster preparedness. 

Presently the ground floor houses the Medical Clinic and related facilities (doctor offices).   Level 3 houses a similar clinic, but may be cleared for other projects in the future.

Level 4 houses an experimental nursing simulation in conjunction with Boise State University in the United States.  This simulation will attempt to mimic the real-life nursing simulation environment at Boise, and a study is currently being designed to compare the effectiveness of this environment against the Boise RL simulation.

The next stages of this overall simulation will be to script the various medical components and instruments, and to carefully develop PBL (problem-based learning) scenarios that might lend themselves to a Virtual environment.  I might add emphatically, international participation in these simulations is invited!