Background: Learning from peers is an authentic way to improve psychomotor skills and to reduce stress, in which monitoring the implementation of clinical skills, doing practice, strengthening sense of responsibility and active participation and privates take responsibility for their learning are performed. It can prepare them for their future roles and has lower cost compared to other methods. The purpose of this study was to define the effects of peer education on learning clinical skills in nursing students (interns and trainees).

Materials and methods: In this semi-experimental study, 71 internship and 84 trainees were randomly divided into intervention and control groups. One researcher- made questionnaire was used to collect data to evaluate the clinical skills (40 questions consisting of two parts 20 questions about the standard of care and 20 questions standard clinical skill) before and after Internships. Content validity was used for testing validity and test-retest for reliability.

Results: Mean (± standard deviation) score of clinical skills in intern students were 39.18±0.628 in the intervention group and 32.23 ±3.77 in the control group (P<0.0001). Mean (± standard deviation) score of clinical skills in the trainees of the intervention group was 36.94±2.45 and in the control group was 32.73± 4.40 (P<0.0001).

Conclusion: peer education is effective in teaching clinical skills and promotion of clinical education among junior students as well as own peer students.

Keywords: Peer education, Learning clinical skills.