Executive Summary
As new graduate nurses transition into independent practice, sustained support beyond formal residency is critical to building confidence, intent to stay, and professional belonging. Organic peer-to-peer connection, outside of traditional mentorship structures, plays a key role in reinforcing these outcomes.
CoxHealth’s Peer Pods mentorship model is designed to support the entire nursing workforce, including both new graduate and experienced nurses. Peer Pods creates opportunities for connection across units, campuses, and tenure levels, strengthening integration and engagement beyond clinical onboarding. A structured activity menu helps support this model by giving Pods flexible ways to connect around professional development, shared learning, and well-being.
Instead of pairing mentors 1:1, this model uses shared interests to foster authentic relationships across sites and generations. By pairing flexible participation with professional growth opportunities aligned to the clinical ladder, Peer Pods has strengthened role confidence, job satisfaction, and connection across the organization.
Program Overview
Peer Pods is a group mentorship model that nurses voluntarily sign up for, self-selecting into their pod of choice based on shared personal interests.
Rather than pairing nurses in traditional 1:1 mentor-mentee relationships, the program groups nurses across units, campuses, tenure levels, and generations. At any given time, 80–100 nurses participate across approximately 12 active pods, with pod sizes ranging from 5 to 30 members. Pods are built around a range of shared interests, including:
Reading and books
Outdoor activities and hiking
Sports and recreation
Animal lovers
Food, dining, and cooking
The entry point is shared interest, allowing for professional dialogue, peer learning, and career exploration to emerge organically over time. Pods are dynamic and responsive, meaning groups may be reorganized, closed, or newly created based on engagement trends and emerging interests.
Peer Pods supplements CoxHealth’s formal residency and preceptorship structures. This pilot does not replace clinical onboarding. Instead, it extends connection and engagement beyond unit-level transition-to-practice programming.