Nursing students pair up for peer mentoring program

By Marcia Porter | Sept. 25, 2014

Tim and Anush from NursingLecture room 256 in the School of Nursing (SON) is buzzing with the sound of student voices. Seats are nearly filled.

Into this chatter walks Anush Noziri, a second-year student, and one of many senior SON students who’ve signed up to be peer mentors in the school’s brand new peer mentoring program. Mr. Noziri is from Tajikistan by way of New York; his mentee is first year Tim Maher from the Goulds.

“I love being involved with the university,” said Mr. Noziri. “I love helping people out and since I am a second-year student I can help, I can tell him (Tim), about things like our courses and clinicals. I can tell him how awesome it is here. This would have been a nice program to have when I was a new student.”

Judging by turnout for this information session, there’s a high level of interest in the peer mentoring program among first years and more senior students.

“One of the big things we noticed as fourth-year students is that the culture of the nursing school is very different from that of other faculties,” said Emilee Downey, a member of the nursing Society and one of the members of the Canadian Nursing Students’ Association (CNSA) who helped develop the program.

“We heavily rely on our classmates over our four years and (near the end of the program) you always hear fourth years say, ‘We are one big family here.’ So we thought, why not bring these first years together and help them make the transition, help them to adapt.”

During last year’s national CNSA conference in Vancouver, B.C., SON delegates discovered a real desire among nursing students for peer mentoring.

They presented a resolution calling for Canadian nursing schools to adopt peer mentoring programs. It passed easily. Following the conference, students collected information about programs at other universities and colleges across North America, and made a presentation to the CNSA.

“This is a program about making connections,” said Ms. Downey. “Often in first semester, some students don’t succeed, and they drop out. Why? We want to help them make their experience as good as possible.”

“Anyone who’s in nursing understands there are a lot of stressful things in nursing school,” sEmilee and Megan from the SONaid Megan Carey, a fourth-year student who also worked on developing the new program. “There’s everything from, ‘What kind of CPR do you need and what kind of clinical courses and labs do we have, to where is the nearest grocery store.’ It’s such a big transition, especially from high school.”

“My first year I arrived from out of town and had no friends or family here. It was overwhelming,” said Jerica Crosby. “I had tons of questions but I was really intimidated so I didn’t ask them.”

New student Chelsay Cooke, who is paired with Ms. Crosby, is relieved.

“I always have a ton of questions,” she said. “I tend to overthink everything. I have questions about exams, what’s important, what to write down.”

The peer mentoring program has a faculty adviser who will serve as a resource for students. Over the year, Prof. Lynn Cooze will also evaluate the program to find if it lives up to expectations and meets student needs.


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