Avatar II: The Hospital

Health-care facilities are discovering that practicing in the virtual world can have major benefits in real life.

In the drill, developed by Laura Greci, a professor at the medical school at the University of California, San Diego, ER nurses log in to the virtual world, where each assumes control of an avatar—a cartoon rendering of a nurse wearing crisp blue scrubs. The nurses can walk their avatars through hallways, up and down stairs and through doorways using keyboard or mouse controls. They can give voice to their avatars by typing—their words pop up as a text box—or by speaking into a special microphone. Headsets let each nurse hear ambient noise from the virtual scene and listen to the other avatars talking.
In the drill, which lasts three hours, the nurse-avatars must create a triage system, assess each patient and figure out how to isolate the most contagious.
(..)
In addition to the disaster drills, Second Life is increasingly being used to train medical and nursing students in clinical skills. Medical schools traditionally have run such exercises using computerized mannequins, which can be programmed to exhibit certain symptoms. But each mannequin costs about $65,000, so there may be just one for every 50 or 100 students. In Second Life, though, every student can take on a nurse or doctor avatar and practice interviewing virtual patients, filling in medical charts and making diagnoses.