Near-peer interprofessional simulation training in an undergraduate setting

To assess the effectiveness of near-peer educators to improve human factors education for medical and nursing students managing an unwell simulated patient. 12 medical and eight nursing students volunteered. Doctors and nurses qualified for less than 2 years were used to run and debrief the sessions. Self-assessment Likert-scale questionnaires, focussing on topics related to human factors along with differences between near-peer and senior-led simulation sessions, were used before and after the intervention. The results showed an improvement in every question for topics related to human factors. The highest post-programme scores were in escalation of care and knowing professional role or limitations. Students scored near-peers highly in relation to relevance to practice, content covered and approachability. The post-programme questionnaires show students prefer near-peer to senior-led simulation sessions. The interprofessional nature was well received. Our project differs from traditional undergraduate simulation, where students can act out of the role they are training in. Near-peer educators appear to be more approachable and cover content more relevant to clinical practice compared with senior staff. Improvements were seen in every human factor related field.