In the last few years nursing education has shifted from the hospital based apprenticeship-like training to University education. Although the University curricula consist of a practical component and nursing undergraduates spend a considerable time in supervised clinical practice, they may not be fully prepared to meet the daily challenges encountered in clinical practice. Therefore, they find decision making during acute emergencies to be arduous and stressful. This work in progress will report on the development of an interactive multimedia package which attempts to simulate the complexities of emergency situations in a typical hospital, and in so doing, provides graduate nurses with authentic case-based reasoning.

The architecture of this project reflects a Case-Based Reasoning approach where learners encounter cases/problem situations. They are encouraged to reflect on each case, seek solutions by asking practitioners, consulting textbooks and other material before making decisions on the final response to such emergencies.

This project is innovative by integrating multimedia technologies with case-based reasoning thus providing a significant improvement in the authenticity of the situation to which learners are asked to respond.

This multimedia environment is being developed using Asymetrix's Multimedia ToolBook, a quasi-object-oriented, event-driven development system for Microsoft Windows. Such a platform offers the advantages of rapid proto-typing and testing of the package.

The current prototype is currently undergoing a series of iterations of progressive development, testing and formative evaluation by both academics and clinical practitioners at Melbourne University, USQ and St VincentŐs Hospital. Final evaluation of this multimedia learning environment will involve user workshops and questionnaires to measure user perceptions of the efficacy of such a product.

Acknowledgements
This project is funded by The Committee for University Teaching and Staff Development (CUTSD) Australia.