Development of a Peer Mentoring Program for Clinical Practice of Nursing Students

Nursing education institutions need to develop a realistic clinical practice program, which is based on clinical environment. The objective is to develop a peer mentoring program for first clinical practice (PMPCP) for nursing students and evaluate its effects. This research has two steps: development of a peer mentoring program for nursing students for clinical practice, and the validation of its effects. PMPCP was applied to 42 juniors and 36 seniors of nursing students at a nursing college, from April to June, 2012. The data were analyzed with the SAS (Ver.9.1) and using the Wilcoxon signed rank test. The mentee’s and the mentor’s self-leadership capability are improved from 3.64 to 3.84 (S=199.0, p=0.004) and from 3.74 to 4.03 (S=185.0, p<.001), respectively. The anxiety level of mentees was reduced from 3.33 to 2.91 (S=-218, p<.001). PMPCP was proved to be an effective mentoring program for nursing students in reducing anxiety and also improving selfleadership. Therefore, PMPCP will contribute to educators and nursing students at college as an educational tool or an effective hands-on training tool.