THE EFFECT OF PEER MENTORING PROGRAM ON ANXIETY STUDENT IN CLINICAL ENVIRONMENT

Anxiety is one of the most common problems of nursing students in the clinical
settings that can cause adverse effects on their learning. Peer-mentoring can be one of the strategies to
reduce the students anxiety in the clinical environment. The purpose of this study is to examine the
effects that a peer mentoring program has on anxiety student in clinical environment.
Materials & Methods: This research is a quasi-experimental study in which 44 second semester
nursing students of the faculty of Nursing and Midwifery were included in 1391 through census, and
they were randomly divided into two groups of control (21) and intervention (23) .In intervention
group, a 7th semester nursing student as peer mentor was assigned to accompany 4-5 second semester
nursing students by taking the role of guiding and supporting. In the control group, clinical education
was performed typically by clinical teachers. The instruments for data collection were Spiel Berger
Anxiety Questionnaire which measures the students' anxiety in the first and at the end of the
apprenticeship training for both groups. The data were analyzed by SPSS (16) software using, Chi²,
Wilcoxon test, Mann Whitney.
Results: The results of this study showed that anxiety scores of students in the intervention group after
the peer mentor program declined from of 34/34 to 29/69. Wilcoxon test also showed a significant
statistical difference (P=0/001). Although students' anxiety score means were lower in both groups
after the program, the average of anxiety student score in the experimental group was lower than that
of the control group. The difference between the mean scores of the two groups was significant
according to Mann Whitney test (p=0/001).
Conclusion: Peer mentoring program -based education leads to reducing on the student's anxiety in
clinical environment. So, it is suggested that clinical curriculum designers use this inexpensive method
as a complementary educational method, even if not as an independent method