The Comprehensive Benefits of Peer Tutoring on Nursing Students

Theodoro Mercado, Verrazzano Class of 2024, completed major in Nursing

In my nursing program at the College of Staten Island, I had the opportunity to learn an array of skills and interact with various individuals throughout my journey as a nursing student. I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with numerous teachers and peers alike who have served to guide and mentor me in growing as a student and future nurse.

My capstone explored the ramifications of mentorship on personal, academic, and professional growth. When completing this project, I was grateful to be able to work with my mentor Professor Danielle Hunton, who taught my Nursing 310 course titled, Interpersonal Dynamics for Professional Nursing.

Peer tutoring is a specific form of mentoring, and it is a form of communication that I employ either consciously or instinctively with patients and peers. The innate process of peer tutoring compels individuals to foster more effective forms of communication and reinforces their own knowledge of the respective subjects in question. It is inexplicably tied to the profession of nursing, and is a skill that is seemingly encouraged throughout the curriculum and serves to prepare students to perform well academically and to carry these skills into their eventual careers as nurses; it is for these reasons that I am ecstatic to be able to relay the implications of this skill amongst my peers.

The creation of this capstone project served as a reflection into the ways peer tutoring shaped my academic career in nursing, and while not all of its benefits were explicitly clear to me at the time, through the completion of this paper I can more succinctly identify how this form of communication shaped my experience as a fledgling nurse. Reviewing the literature for this capstone project granted me an opportunity to examine current nursing research on the employment of peer tutoring and the teach-back method in academic, clinical, and personal settings.

It was through this literature review that I am able to share my findings of these studies with my fellow students and future nurses, so that they may be able to appreciate the significance that mentoring and peer tutoring has on their future endeavors.

I am grateful to have been able to compile a formal literature review of this topic with the aid of Professor Hunton. Courses within the CSI nursing curriculum mention the role communication has within the profession, however, seldom do courses review the topic as extensively as Nursing 310. This course stressed the implications and benefits of mentoring and peer tutoring, and it is only following the completion of this capstone that I can adequately conceptualize the profound impacts that these skills have on students and nurses. This capstone project serves as a source of academic analysis and personal pride, as I was able to compile a comprehensive analysis of the benefits of a tool that was employed extensively throughout my tenure as a student.

Nurse’s Action Towards Stroke Awareness and Prevention: A Case Study

 Gabrielle Artz, Verrazzano Class of 2024, completed major in Nursing 

These past four years in the nursing program taught me so much and has helped shape the person I am today. I feel like for most students who have to complete a thesis or a capstone project, they will say that it crept up on them very quickly. I am one of those students.

Throughout my time in the nursing program I was able to figure out what I was interested in perusing and what areas I was not too fond of. My main interest is in neurological critical care, and I focused on that area for my capstone project.

I was inspired by both the Medical Surgical Nursing III course and my experience as a volunteer on the Neurology Stroke unit at a local hospital on Staten Island. I have had the privilege to work with Professor Regina Lama for this project. She has an immense amount of knowledge to contribute, and she guided me through this project, as she was a neuro critical care nurse. She also taught the course that sparked my inspiration for this project.

While volunteering on the stroke unit I heard of many cases where patients suffered from ischemic stroke who could have received treatments but did not receive the medications because the patient did not seek treatment in enough time.

I struggled trying to organize all of the points that I wanted to touch upon in my project. Professor Lama guided me to speak to people working on the stroke unit to learn more about the protocols. I did just that, and spoke with a staff nurse and the nurse manager on the unit, where they provided me with teaching handouts and the protocols they follow when they are treating a patient in the hospital.

Further reflecting on this capstone project, I gained so much knowledge in wanting to spread more awareness of stroke in the community. I was so grateful to be able to work with Professor Lama, who also teaches the nursing course 411, Community Nursing. I am proud to have been able to create a case study and analysis to provide stroke awareness and work towards preventing this life threatening event. To say the least, it has been a journey and I do not take this experience for granted.