Date of Award

2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Nursing (MSN)

Committee Chair

Cindy Miller

Abstract

Nursing students have described clinical experiences as being stressful, yet the application of classroom knowledge to the clinical health care setting is a requirement. The purpose of this mixed-method study is to compare students’ perceptions of the peer mentoring leadership experience (PMLE) and the student charge nurse experience (SCNE). The PMLE was piloted at a southeastern community college’s associate degree nursing (ADN) program. Hand-selected PMLE second-year nursing students (n=5) were paired with hand-selected PMLE first-year nursing students (n=5) for medical/surgical clinical rotations. The ADN program’s purpose for these clinical rotations was to provide a mutually beneficial mentoring experience. The remaining second-year nursing students (n=25) registered in the health system concepts course participated in the SCNE in which one-on-one time was spent with an on-duty designated floor charge nurse during medical/surgical clinical rotations. These second-year student participants spent additional time in a student charge nurse role meeting course management and leadership objectives while overseeing first-year students’ (n=37) patient care with clinical faculty as resources. Students voluntarily completed a survey indicating their perceptions of how learning objectives for the clinical experience were met for client advocate, educator, and caregiver, prioritization of client care, time management, communicator, leader, multi-disciplinary team relationship builder and self-confidence. Descriptive analysis was completed for the quantitative data and qualitative data was reviewed with grouping of themes. Results from the study indicated that the PMLE respondents perceived their experience met the individual course objectives more than the compared SCNE respondents.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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