The Most Important Thing We Can Do Is Listen: Making Peer Mentoring Available for All

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to increase the availability of mentor training materials for people with kidney disease, learning disabilities, and vision difficulties through the creation of an audiobook and a large font textbook to improve their participation in the training process. A qualitative approach was utilized to evaluate the participants’ training experience. A secondary goal of this project was to assess the mentee’s quality of life (QOL) prior to being matched with a mentor and then 3–6 months after the match. During our yearlong study, 11 participants completed the peer mentor training classes and 5 mentees were matched with the mentors. Mentee QOL was measured by the CDC’s Healthy Days Measure before participating in the peer mentoring program and reflected variable QOL for mentee participants. Findings indicate that participants utilized the audiobook and felt it aided their training experience.