Learning Objective #1: cite two benefits to intra-disciplinary mentoring in nursing education.

Learning Objective #2: cite two areas of further research concerning intra-disciplinary mentoring in nursing education

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The purpose of this descriptive phenomenological study was to explore the intra-disciplinary experience of mentoring in nursing education. Professional service activities, like mentoring, provide students with experiential educational opportunities. Benefits from the advanced students’ perspective of service-learning are numerous but not well-recorded in the research literature. Furthermore, novice student experiences with being mentored by fellow students are poorly articulated. This developing field of strategy is encouraged within the nursing community as initial collaboration between senior and beginning nursing students in the clinical setting suggests decreased anxiety of the mentored student promoting their critical thinking while simultaneously enhancing senior student empowerment. Additionally, decreasing ranks of qualified nurse educators need to use creative teaching methodologies to offset burgeoning numbers of students. Mentoring was employed on the first ever clinic day for novice nursing students as senior students were invited to partake in this professional service activity with those newest to the nursing program. All students assisted nursing home clients with AM care while the mentoring between the different skill levels of students occurred. Nursing home residents received excellent care and attention, as senior students were asked to model, explain, and teach beginner students who focused upon learning and listening to their academic peers. Focus groups gathered the descriptive nature of the mentoring experience for both senior and novice student to better evaluate the full benefits of the activity. Such research including insight from both the provider and recipient of service activities is exceedingly rare in the nursing literature. Nursing students provided verbal accounts of the mentoring experience while answering open-ended solicitations. Their words were woven into themes as to what mentoring in nursing education is like. Such experiences lend credence to intra-disciplinary mentoring in nursing education and provide evidence for further employment and exploration of this teaching model.