Tracey Clancy

Developing future nurse educators through peer mentoring

License. The full terms of the License are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. Permissions beyond the scope of the License are administered by Dove Medical Press Limited. Information on how to request permission may be found at: http://www.dovepress.com/permissions.php Nursing: Research and Reviews 2015:5 13–21 Nursing: Research and Reviews Dovepress

Psychosocial and career outcomes of peer mentorship in medical resident education: a systematic review protocol

BackgroundMany medical residents lack ready access to social and emotional supports that enable them to successfully cope with the challenges associated with medical residency. This absence of support has been shown to lead to high levels of burnout, decreased mental wellbeing, and difficulty mastering professional competencies in this population. While there is emerging evidence that peer mentoring can be an important source of psychosocial and career-related support for many individuals, the extent of the evidence regarding the benefits of peer mentorship in medical residency education has not yet been established. We describe a protocol for a systematic review to assess the effects of peer mentoring on medical residents’ mental wellbeing, social connectedness, and professional competencies.MethodsStudies included in this review will be those that report on peer-mentoring relationships among medical residents. Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods studies will be eligible for inclusion. No date or language limits will be applied. We will search EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsychINFO, Web of Science, Scopus, ERIC, Education Research Complete, and Academic Research Complete databases to identify relevant studies. Two authors will independently assess all abstracts and full-text studies for inclusion and study quality and extract study data in duplicate.DiscussionThis is the first systematic review to explicitly explore the role of peer mentoring in the context of medical residency education. We anticipate that the findings from this review will raise awareness of the benefits and challenges associated with peer-mentoring relationships, further the development and implementation of formal peer-mentoring programs for medical residents, and, through identifying gaps in the existing literature, inform future research efforts.Systematic review registrationThis protocol has not been registered in PROSPERO or any other publicly accessible registry.

The courage to be vulnerable: exploring experiences of peer and self-assessment of teaching in nursing education

Within academia, more than one measure of assessment is required to ensure teaching success and ongoing teaching development. Peer assessment of teaching is one of the methods that can benefit teaching development; however, there is currently a lack of nursing research literature regarding the processes, outcomes, and use of self-reflection in the peer assessment process. In the spring and summer of 2015, the development and implementation of a tailored pilot project of peer and self-assessment of teaching occurred within an undergraduate nursing program at a Western Canadian university. The overarching philosophy of the pilot project of peer and self assessment was one of using peer to peer developmental feedback as a means of creating a community of support for professional teaching development. The study reported on in this paper is an initial step in addressing a lack of research literature within the field of nursing to support the practice of peer assessment of teaching as a sustainable and effective means of offering teaching development support. The aim of this study was to explore and describe the experiences of teaching faculty participants in the pilot project of peer and self-assessment of teaching. A qualitative descriptive design was employed to explore the experiences of pilot participants. Focus group discussions and individual interviews were used to gather data. A total of 12 nursing educators involved in the pilot project participated in the study. Conventional content analysis of the combined data rendered themes around vulnerability and the influence and importance of establishing trust in selecting a partner, making teaching public, improving teaching practice, and maintaining accountability and responsibility. Peer and self-assessment of teaching has the potential to benefit professional teaching development in nursing education. Both peers within a peer and self-assessment partnership can experience feelings of vulnerability. Having the courage to be vulnerable or identifying and overcoming vulnerabilities and establishing trust with a teaching colleague can result in mutual learning, can benefit individual and team growth, and can enhance accountability to the undergraduate nursing curriculum and student learning. professional development, qualitative study, nursing faculty, self-reflection, peer assessment