Professor Campbell said yesterday that the school's extensive clinical simulation suite and the National Broadband Network were a heady combination.

``Because we have the NBN here, we should be using it to think about partnerships internationally,'' Professor Campbell said.

The former UK nursing academic said that he already had contacts at universities in the US and there were others to be made to develop joint projects using the simulation equipment.

``We need to invest in it and give it the kind of international profile it is worth instead of just saying that we have it,'' he said.

Professor Campbell replaces Denise Fassett as head of nursing and midwifery, based at the Launceston campus after Professor Fassett was appointed the acting dean of health science.

He arrived in Tasmania last Friday after a 1500-kilometre drive from Armidale, in New South Wales, where he had been the  University of New England's head of the school of health for four years.

Professor Campbell brings extensive experience to the University of Tasmania appointment as both a practising nurse and a health academic in the UK before New England.

His academic appointments have included Newcastle Polytechnic, the University of Southampton and Northumbria University.

In 2000 he became the founding chairman  of nursing practice at Northumbria University in collaboration with City Hospitals Sunderland Foundation Trust - a 1000-bed, 5000-staffed acute hospital in the UK's north-east where he was nursing practice research head.

  Professor Campbell said that the Tasmanian school of nursing's three campuses at Launceston, Hobart and Sydney gave it  a capacity that he was  looking forward to exploring.

Nursing at the university in Hobart has a new home after a major renovation of a historic building on the Domain.

The refitted building has teaching spaces, a lecture theatre and facilities for low and high-fidelity simulation teaching.