An Analysis of Peer Teaching Between Adult Health and Nursing Assessment Students

Peer-teaching is an educational strategy that has been incorporated into many educational settings. Learning from and with each other occurs in all levels of education, and there are a variety of methods of peer-teaching that can be implemented. Peer-learning and teaching can be mutually beneficial and involve sharing of knowledge, ideas, and experiences; peer-learning should be interdependent and not simply independent (Boud, 1988). Peer learning can be defined as peers learning from and with each other both formally and informally (Boud, Cohen, & Sampson, 2001). Peer-teaching methods have been used in some School of Nursing curricula, and evaluations have shown a variety of results. Faculty members at a local School of Nursing determined that this would be a useful strategy to use to teach beginning nursing students some of the basic nursing care interventions. Previously, these interventions had been taught later in the curriculum, so the decision was made to introduce new students to these skills earlier in the curriculum. The implementation of this stragety was analyzed to determine the effectiveness of peer teaching from the nursing student perspective. The Adult Health II nursing students at a mid-size, Southern university taught basic nursing skills to Nursing Assessment students who were in their first semester of nursing school. IRB approval was obtained, and a survey was anonymously completed by student participants. Both the Adult Health II and Nursing Assessment students voluntarily participated in the survey. The survey results were then used to analyze the successes and shortcomings of peer-teaching through comparison to findings from similar research studies that were published. The aim of this research is to use the knowledge gained to influence future teaching strategies and classroom structure within the School of Nursing. This research, therefore, illustrates the results of peer teachings and how those results will be used in the future nursing curriculum.