Introduction: Peer- centered education is one of the new educational methods in which learners are as active as teachers. In this method, the teacher designs and directs the teaching situation and the peer implements the process and teaches the learners. This study aims to investigate the importance and application of peer- centered education methods in medical sciences.
Methods & Materials: This study is a narrative review that was conducted through the search of Persian and English sources in reliable domestic and international scientific databases including SID, Magiran, PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar search engine, has been compiled using the keywords of education, learning, peer, Peer-centered, student and medical sciences in the period from 2015 to 2024.
Results: Adequate training of peer educators and their evaluation is very important in using this educational model; Peers must be sufficiently trained in the field of educational content and have sufficient mastery over the academic content to be able to handle it well. The steps of implementing the peer education method include regular evaluations to monitor the strengths and weaknesses of the learners, selection of fellows (peers) with the cooperation of teachers, strategies to evaluate the effectiveness of the program, feedback, and evaluation of the program, and modification of the program if needed. The evidence indicates that this method has been used many times in medical education and the results of studies indicate the effectiveness of this educational method.
Conclusion: It seems that the use of the peer-centered method can partially solve the shortage of instructors for medical students, especially for clinical education; therefore, it is suggested that postgraduate students be used as peer teachers in medical sciences faculties, subject to the provision of adequate training and their continuous assessment in clinical environments.