Peering: the essence of collaborative mentoring in critical care.

To provide and sustain high-quality patient care, nurses must collaborate and gain strength and vision for the future from their peers, young and old. It is known that mentoring assists all people, both mentors and mentees, to be better than what they would be by themselves. This underlying philosophy seems to improve recruitment and retention of staff by fostering a collegial and respectful unit culture. This project paired senior nursing students in critical care in their leadership/management rotation with a nurse and found that both new and experienced nurses had similar perceptions of mentoring and that it should include peer collaboration.