The Power of Presence in Virtual Teaching and Practice Environments.

This article examines the concept of telepresence and the use of video chat platforms to facilitate family and nurse presence in hospital settings. Ethical, technical, and logistical challenges for using video chat platforms at the bedside are addressed. In addition, the Community of Inquiry model is used to explore how human presence is facilitated in distance-accessible nursing education. Special focus is on the use of technology to meet the challenges of presence during virtual nursing instruction.