Effects of peer mentoring on nursing students’ perceived stress, sense of belonging, self-efficacy and loneliness

Mentorship has been around for years and has been explored in nursing education in the clinical settings. Despite evidence that indicates that the academic environment is the most common source of stress, little mentorship implementation and investigation has been done in this environment. The purpose of this research is to describe the effects of a mentorship experience on the level of perceived stress, sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and loneliness by first year baccalaureate nursing students. A quasi-experimental design was conducted. Seventy baccalaureate nursing students in the first year of their program (n = 34 in the experimental group; n = 36 in the control group) enrolled in a single baccalaureate nursing program were recruited. Third year mentors were purposefully selected by nursing professors within the program. The Perceived Stress Scale, the College Self-Efficacy Inventory (CSEI)–Revised, Sense of Belonging-Psychological, Sense of Belonging-Antecedents, and the Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale were used to evaluate the various concepts as these tools were used in previous research with college level students and deemed to be reliable and valid tools for measuring the relevant concepts. The mentorship program was statistically significant in reducing first year nursing students’ perceived stress and loneliness. It also appeared to increase their sense of self-efficacy and psychological sense of belonging. The mentorship experience could potentially enhance the student experience as well as aid the academic institution in retention and resource maximization. The focus of this research was on the academic mentoring by peers and is worth further exploration and possible wide-scale integration within nursing education.