Even as the United States struggles to cope with a critical nationwide shortage of nurses, existing nursing education programs are unable to meet the demand for unlicensed nursing students to gain real-world clinical experiences. In response, a growing number of vendors and nursing education programmers are integrating virtual clinical experiences in the nursing curriculum. Moreover, these virtual clinical experiences are especially effective because many young nursing students have grown up with computer-based technologies and readily understand how the process operates. The purpose of this paper is to provide the results of a review of online, peer-reviewed and scholarly resources concerning these issues, followed by a summary of the research and important findings concerning the integration of virtual clinical experiences into the nursing education curriculum today. Exploration of the Internet regarding virtual clinical experiences

There is a growing emphasis on integrating virtual clinical experiences into the nursing education curriculum in response to a shortage of opportunities for real-world clinical experiences as well as the mandates of the Affordable Care Act that underscored the need for increased use of electronic health information system to support transparency and patient-data transferability to health care providers across the country (Allen, 2013). As a result, nursing students today must possess a new skill set that includes a comprehensive understanding concerning how to access data and analyze it appropriately, as well as using this information for quality improvement initiatives that are intended to improve patient care and clinical outcomes (Allen, 2014). In sum, nursing students are already learning the skills that are needed to benefit from virtual clinical experiences and these issues are discussed further below.

Current virtual clinical experience literature in nursing

One of the more rigorous curricular requirements for nursing students at present is completing so-called “clinicals,” and while these real-world training experiences are essential, they can also be taxing for both the students and nursing educators involved. For instance, according to the nursing consultants at Lippincott Nursing Education, “A key part of nursing education is participating in clinicals, which is basically following real nurses around and interacting with real patients” (para. 3). Indeed, Duquesne University’s master of nursing program literature makes it clear that clinical experiences are an integral and indispensable part of the nursing education process. In this regard, these educators advise that:

For nearly all professionals outside of healthcare, internships are a rite of passage along the way toward a higher education degree or post-graduation employment. For nurses, however, the traditional ‘internship’ has a different spin: clinical experience. For all intents and purposes, clinical experience is to nurses what an internship is to business students, and clinical experiences for nurses provide important insight and practice that may improve patient care in the future (The importance of clinical experience, 2018, para. 2).

Although it is reasonable to suggest that virtual clinical experiences cannot replace traditional hands-on experiences altogether, it is also becoming increasingly apparent that this learning strategy can provide a wide array of benefits. In this regard, the Lipponcott consultants add that, “[Traditional clinicals are] an invaluable opportunity for nursing students to get hands-on experience with...

But the reality is, not all hospitals are able to accommodate the demand from nursing education programs to have unlicensed trainees throughout their facility” (Limited clinical sites for nursing students, 2017).
The need for integrated virtual clinical experiences into the traditional nursing education curriculum can also help mitigate the problems that are associated with the provision of traditional clinicals. At noted in the introduction, the United States is currently experiencing a severe shortage of nurses of all types (Nardi & Gyurko, 2015), but many nursing schools are restricting their enrollment levels due to a lack of opportunities for their students to participate in traditional clinical experiences (Limited clinical sites for nursing students, 2017). These constraints are especially acute in nursing specialty programs in psychiatric mental health or maternity-pediatrics (Limited clinical sites for nursing students, 2017). According to the consultants at Lippincott, though, “There is a silver lining to the issue of having limited clinical sites for nursing students [because] there is a growing acceptable of nursing schools replacing clinical hours with virtual simulations, which allow students to experience many different patient scenarios hands-on, from the safety of the classroom” (Limited clinical sites for nursing students, 2017, para. 4).

Virtual clinical experiences differ in some fundamental ways from traditional clinicals, but both approaches share many of the same beneficial outcomes as well as some additional advantages. While the above-described traditional clinical experience process sounds straightforward, it is inherently rife with limitations and constraints. For instance, the traditional clinical experience involves a nursing educator accompanying a number of nursing students to a clinical site and the students receive assignments to care for one or two patients for the day (Limited clinical sites for nursing students, 2017).

This traditional approach, though, means that the nursing educator is required to spend time with each of the students when they perform specific tasks such as the administration of medications or psychomotor skills, with the end result being an exhausted educator and nursing students who only benefited from a small amount of personal time, meaning that they likely failed to make any decisions concerning patient care (Limited clinical sites for nursing students, 2017). Consequently, the guidance provided by the Lippincott Nursing Educator Web site emphasizes that, “Due to this lack of decision-making, it is difficult to assess whether or not the student has understood the complexity of the health care environment and the need to multitask and problem solve - critical skills for clinical practice” (Limited clinical sites for nursing students, 2017, para. 5).

Taken together, it is clear that the provision of virtual clinical experiences in the form of simulations represents a timely and valuable enterprise, especially given the proven benefits that can accrue to their use. In a virtual clinical experience context, simulation is defined as “a technique rather than a technology that is able to provide realistic environments or practice proxies for the purposes of learning, training, and practice” (Sanko, 2017, p. 22). The advantages of using simulations for traditional nursing clinicals include those set forth below:

· Simulation labs provide clinical opportunities: Rather than slash the number of nursing students they are accepting and further exacerbate…