Abstract

Introduction: One of the new methods of teaching is peer teaching, but its efficacy has gained little attention in nursing education especially in clinical skills. Therefore, this study examined the effect of near-peer teaching on learning hand hygiene skills among nursing students. Methods: In this quasi-experimental study, 80 first grade nursing were selected and randomly assigned to two groups: ″instructor teaching″ and ″near-peer teaching″. The data collection tool was a hand hygiene skill checklist which was completed based on observations before and after training. Intervention group and control group were practiced by peers and academic member, respectively. Evaluation was done by one academic member who had no information about students groups through the same checklist. Data were analyzed with conduct independent sample t-test and paired sample t-test. Confidence interval 95 (α= 0.05) was considered as significant level. Finding: The findings shows that, No significant difference was found between two groups regarding the scores of hand hygiene skills before training (p = 0.66). After training, the average score of hand hygiene skills was 10.8 ± 0.99 in″ instructor group ″ and 11.6 ± 0.53 in the ″near-peer group″, and there was a significant difference between the groups (p <0.01). Conclusion The improvement of nursing students' hand hygiene skill in the″ near-peer group″ is better than the ″instructor teaching group″ and it is suggested to use it as a method for teaching students practical skills. © 2020 Journal of Advanced Pharmacy Education & Research.