Fostering Peer Evaluation Skills in Nursing Students

Nursing peer review is a professional practice in which nurses offer constructive, non-personal, practice-related feedback to fellow nurses. The use of nursing peer review has been recommended by the American Nurses Association (ANA 1988, 2014) and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC 2008). Despite being recommended by professional organizations, the use of peer review in nursing has not been widely implemented. Evaluation of nursing colleagues has the potential to enhance professional nursing, both in practice and in nursing education. Fostering the skills needed to provide peers with evaluative feedback might best be accomplished if the process is started during nursing school. Teaching ways in which to give and receive feedback without causing feelings of conflict could normalize the process for future generations of nurses. The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental, descriptive study was to examine the impact of teaching nursing peer review skills to student nurses. Based on results, lessons on providing constructive peer feedback will be incorporated into future semesters in a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) program at a state university in Arkansas.