Fostering leadership and Educational SkillsfFor Advanced Practice Nursing Students Through Use of a Peer to Peer Educational Activity

An increasing lack of clinical preceptors for primary care pediatric nurse practitioners prompted this nursing program to incorporate a peer learning experience for graduating pediatric nurse practitioner students in an effort to stimulate interest in and alleviate fears of the clinical preceptor role.  Students in the final semester of their program were asked to participate in a peer to peer educational experience with a first semester pediatric nurse practitioner student.  Both students were directly supervised by the clinical faculty member who was also the clinical preceptor at this facility.  The advanced student moved through their clinical day with the novice student observing the activities.   Results of this pilot learning activity indicated that the experience was a positive learning tool for both levels of students.  The graduating pediatric nurse practitioner students gained an appreciation for the preceptor role, and the novice students reported increased confidence in their ability to achieve the learning objectives of the program.  Outcomes for the graduating students were the realization of their own professional growth, experience in the preceptor role, opportunity for demonstrating their skills, and reflective learning on their professional development.  Outcomes for the novice student included less stress in the clinical setting, collegiality with a professional peer, and enhanced confidence from seeing that success in the program was possible.  Barriers to this activity included not enough clinical sites for all students to participate, faculty oversight of experience, productivity demands of the preceptor, clinic/systems limitations on student to preceptor ratios, and students’ personal schedules.  Overall the peer learning activity resulted in positive outcomes for all, and the participants recommended this activity be a permanent part of the program.  Faculty recommendations for subsequent use of this peer learning activity are for pre and post surveys of student participants and overcoming challenges to implementing this activity in other clinical sites thus making it available to all students in the program.