CASE STUDY
The School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Newcastle integrates Body Interact across its fully online Masters of Nurse Practitioner program, enabling registered nurses from rural and remote Australia to develop advanced clinical reasoning, diagnostic skills and reflective practice.
UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE
Masters of Nurse Practitioner
Online Learning
Clinical Reasoning
Simulation-Based Training
COUNTRY
Australia
CITY
Newcastle, NSW
PROGRAM
Masters of Nurse Practitioner (RN)
FORMAT
Fully Online
PARTNER SINCE
2022
For a country as vast as Australia, bringing world-class clinical simulation to registered nurses in rural and remote communities requires more than good intentions. The University of Newcastle found the answer in virtual patients that travel wherever the student is.
Pause and Reflect
Real-Life Investigations
Clinical Reasoning
Real-Life Medical Images
Performance Metrics
“Body Interact is vital as it allows students to engage with the NP teaching team, their peers, and clinical supervisors in a virtual clinical setting, no matter their location.”
Professor Brandi Cole, BScPN, MMH(OP), MN(NP), PhD student
Senior Lecturer, Program Convenor, Masters of Nurse Practitioner Program
University of Newcastle
THE CHALLENGE
ADVANCED CLINICAL TRAINING ACROSS A CONTINENT
Australia’s vast geography and dispersed population create unique challenges for the continuous medical education of health professionals. Rural and remote communities face particular difficulties accessing quality training, and simulation-based education has aimed to address this effectively.
The Masters of Nurse Practitioner program is exclusively online, offering an engaging and rich learning experience to students from all corners of Australia. With large participation from nurses in remote and rural areas, a Virtual Patient Simulator is, according to Professor Brandi Cole, vital for enabling students to engage in a virtual clinical setting regardless of their location.
The program prepares Registered Nurses for the autonomous NP role, developing advanced skills in health assessment, diagnosis, and pharmacotherapeutics. Graduates can specialize in areas including Aging and Palliative Care, Child and Family Health, Chronic and Complex Care, Emergency and Acute Care, Mental Health, and Primary Health Care.
Before introducing Body Interact, the School of Nursing and Midwifery faced two central questions for its fully online Nurse Practitioner program:
- How can clinical simulation be delivered in an interactive, immersive way to nurses studying remotely?
- How can educators assess whether a professional is truly competent to practice as a Nurse Practitioner?
Aging and Palliative Care
Emergency and Acute Care
Mental Health
Child and Family Health
Chronic and Complex Care
Primary Health Care
CURRICULUM INTEGRATION
BODY INTERACT ACROSS THREE TRIMESTERS
Before introducing Body Interact into the program, the entire NP teaching team tried the simulator themselves, including running each scenario with the Quick Solution Guide. This allowed educators to share the real benefits with students from personal experience, integrate the platform meaningfully into the curriculum, and build the trust needed for students to engage fully with the technology.
TRIMESTER 1
Exploration and Group Learning
Students explore the Body Interact platform in group sessions, reviewing basic healthcare concepts, pausing scenarios and discussing signs, symptoms and red flags. Groups are divided by medical specialty and solve clinical scenarios together using Zoom breakout rooms.
TRIMESTER 2
Individual Accounts and Social Learning
Students receive individual accounts and complete approximately 9 clinical scenarios per scheduled training session at their own convenience. After each simulation, they share a screenshot of their metrics on a Canva platform, promoting social learning, mutual support and communication. Weekly group discussions cover scenario performance, feedback and key take-home messages.
TRIMESTER 3
Individualized Sessions and OSCE Assessment
Sessions become more engaging and personalized. Since most students come from rural and remote communities, often hours from their medical supervisors, they can now join scenario resolutions and evaluate their tutoring in an active, on-the-job manner. OSCE exams are conducted orally to assess the clinical reasoning skills developed through virtual patient simulations.
REFLECTIVE PRACTICE
LEARNING FROM MISTAKES IN A SAFE ENVIRONMENT
By practicing in a safe environment, nurses can test their limits and understand the impact of their actions. Reflective practice challenges students to review their metrics without focusing excessively on numbers, encouraging them to learn from diverse experiences and outcomes. The result is not just better simulation scores, but real clinical competence.
A real story: from simulation to real-life diagnosis
One student, an experienced nurse in addiction care, decided to practise a sepsis scenario. Having had limited exposure to this condition in her clinical work, it took her four attempts over one hour and twenty minutes to complete it correctly. She learned from her mistakes and understood how the same diagnosis can have different outcomes depending on the actions taken.
One week later, she told the teaching team that she had successfully diagnosed a real patient with sepsis. Thanks to the Master’s program and its integration with virtual patients, she was able to conduct a comprehensive assessment and identify a deeper level of deterioration.
“The NP teaching staff and student feedback is highly positive. Students appreciate the safety of Body Interact, the real-life investigations and findings, and the variety in clinical presentations.”
Professor Brandi Cole, BScPN, MMH(OP), MN(NP), PhD student
Senior Lecturer, Program Convenor, Masters of Nurse Practitioner Program
University of Newcastle
WHY BODY INTERACT FOR NURSE PRACTITIONERS
FOUR REASONS IT WORKS AT MASTER’S LEVEL
Before introducing Body Interact into the program, the entire NP teaching team tried the simulator themselves, including performing each scenario with the Quick Solution Guide. This gave them the confidence to guide students and integrate the platform meaningfully into the curriculum.
Pause and think
Nurses can focus on patient management without time pressure. At Master’s level, anxiety is not mandatory since healthcare professionals already recognize this bias.
Visual and aural realism
Virtual patients mimic real patients from an aural and visual perspective. From signs to symptoms, they all contribute to the diagnosis, with immediate feedback on every action.
Real-life investigations
Whether in medical exams or test results, outcomes are always aligned with real patients’ diagnostic investigations.
Clinical reasoning
Allowing users to prioritize and make choices puts them in charge of the patient in a safe, controlled environment, helping them understand the rationale behind each decision.
Pause the simulation
Change views and poses
Real-life medical images
Clinical reasoning
Immediate feedback
RESULTS
OUTCOMES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE
FUTURE PLANS
WHAT COMES NEXT AT UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE
The School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Newcastle is committed to deepening its integration of Body Interact. Planned improvements include:
Introduce OSCE scenarios within the final assessment to formally test clinical reasoning skills developed through virtual patient simulation.
Further leverage BI Studio — Body Interact’s Learning Management System — for detailed, individualized performance feedback and timeline review of student actions.
Develop a more diverse scenario catalog to meet the needs of the MNP student cohort, including transgender patients and a multicultural family of virtual patients.
Conduct internal surveys to formally assess whether students perceive Body Interact as an advancement in their clinical skills and competencies.
KNOWLEDGE CONSOLIDATION
CLINICAL TIPS: GOING BACK TO BASICS AFTER EVERY SIMULATION
The NP teaching team embedded “Clinical Tips” videos at the end of each Body Interact simulation to promote knowledge consolidation on basic healthcare concepts. These short videos help students recall concepts that are less commonly used in their day-to-day hospital practice.
Examples include how to identify wheezing during chest auscultation, or how to detect metabolic acidosis on an Arterial Blood Gas test. Aligning knowledge with hands-on practice gives future Nurse Practitioners the chance to recall and apply these concepts when it matters most.
BODY INTERACT CLINICAL TIPS
GO BACK TO BASICS WITH VIRTUAL PATIENTS
Short instructional videos embedded at the end of each simulation reinforce the foundational healthcare concepts that underpin clinical decision-making — bridging the gap between what nurses know and what they apply daily.
FAQ
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
How does the University of Newcastle use Body Interact in nursing education?
Across all three trimesters of its fully online Masters of Nurse Practitioner program: group exploration sessions in trimester one, individual accounts with 9 scenarios per session and social learning in trimester two, and individualised sessions with OSCE oral assessment in trimester three.
Why did the University of Newcastle choose Body Interact?
The program needed interactive, immersive clinical simulation for registered nurses across rural and remote Australia studying fully online. Body Interact was chosen for its ability to pause simulations, present real-life medical images, support clinical reasoning and provide detailed performance metrics for reflective practice.
What results has the University of Newcastle seen?
Highly positive feedback from both teaching staff and students, 5-year program accreditation, and documented cases of students applying skills learned in simulation to real clinical practice, including a successful real-world sepsis diagnosis following virtual patient practice.
