Being a mentor is a fulfilling albeit challenging role that can change the lives of those being taught and, in healthcare, the lives of patients, too. Nurse preceptors are mentors who act as stewards to novice nurses, helping them navigate their new lives and responsibilities as new nurses in the real world. With the ever-changing landscape of healthcare — with the advent of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of medical things (IoMT), evolving diseases, and nursing shortages — less experienced nurses need all the help they can get to develop the necessary skills and resilience to become effective at their jobs.
In this article, we discuss what nurse preceptorship is and provide tips on how to become an effective and compassionate nurse preceptor who can help new nurses get the support and guidance necessary to provide exemplary patient-centered care.
What is a nurse preceptor?
A nurse preceptor is an experienced nurse who mentors new nurses and helps them develop the necessary skills to thrive in the workplace and promote a safe and independent nursing practice. Nurse preceptors also help veteran nurses gain new skills and remain flexible at work, especially when it comes to using new tools and devices, such as telehealth tools and smart or AI-powered medical technologies.
Nurse preceptors are tasked with helping new nurses gain the clinical and communication skills needed to become effective at their work as well as create a safe work environment for them. Because nurse preceptors will guide and monitor new nurses’ progress, they also play a part in evaluating novice nurses’ proficiency levels and overall performance.
Nurse preceptors help novice nurses transition from the educational setting to the workplace for a specific period. Depending on the healthcare facility, the nurse preceptorship period is typically anywhere between six weeks to five months.
Nurse preceptor tips: How to support new nurses effectively
- Start slowly but surely
Try to remember your first day as a new nurse. Chances are, you were incredibly excited but also very stressed and anxious. That is also what your nurse orientees are feeling. Studies have shown how new nurses experienced the highest stress levels at four and 8 months of employment. Stress can negatively impact new nurses’ job satisfaction, work efficiency, and mental health levels, so it’s vital to ensure that new nurses get the support they need to traverse this very crucial and stressful period in their nursing careers.
As a nurse preceptor, it’s a good idea to allow nurses to shadow you at work on their first day. This will give them a good idea of what nurses are expected to do at work: They’ll see how you do rounds, communicate with patients, ask questions or raise clarifications to fellow healthcare professionals, take breaks, do paperwork, and accomplish tasks. On succeeding days, give them a few assignments that are relatively easier to handle so that they can focus on nursing basics, such as patient assessment, charting, communication, and time management.
In the middle of their preceptorship period, allow them to handle more assignments with moderate difficulty. Before their preceptorship period ends, ensure they’re given and are equipped with the skills to handle challenging assignments.
- Give them daily goals and debriefings to develop their clinical reasoning skills
At the start of each shift, help new nurses identify their daily goals by helping create to-do lists based on priority. Allow them to help identify which of the tasks are time-sensitive and critical by asking them guiding questions. Help them identify assignments by importance and severity by asking for their rationale and insights. Take morning briefings as an opportunity to ask your orientees questions that can help them develop their clinical reasoning skills. After their preceptorship, you won’t always be around to answer their questions or provide guidance, so they need to develop the ability to analyze situations based on the information they have relatively quickly.
During your morning briefings, you can also guide them on how to cluster care by asking them what tasks they can do in one visit to a patient rather than doing them via multiple visits. This will help them get a good grasp of time management strategies.
Aside from morning briefings, end-of-day debriefings should also be regularly conducted with orientees. Debriefing with novice nurses promotes learning and openness to feedback, which improves team dynamics and patient care. This can also serve as a safe space to help them process their emotions when emotionally taxing cases arise.
- Give them enough room to grow without micromanaging
Being available to your orientees when they need help or guidance is crucial to their professional growth. However, there’s a fine line between being supportive and micromanaging. Although mentors who micromanage are typically well-intentioned, the impact on their trainees tends to be negative. Orientees who experience micromanagement from their mentors report having poor motivation, autonomy, competence, and well-being. Micromanagement also negatively affects orientees’ ability to work well in teams and deliver proper patient care.
Typical micromanaging traits include refusing to delegate tasks, asking for frequent updates, discouraging independent or autonomous thinking or decision-making, and preferring to do tasks on your own, thinking that your way is the correct way. Give your orientees enough support and guidance without hanging around them at all times. Let them know that they can come to you anytime for help without staying close to them or watching their every move.
- Encourage them to ask questions
Ensure that new nurses understand this one vital fact: Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Asking questions is an important step in unlocking new information, gaining professional wisdom and new experiences, and advancing patient care and safety. Asking questions should be practiced not just by new nurses but by everyone on the healthcare team, and new nurses should be made to feel safe to clarify anything they’re not sure of.
Effective communication is important to cultivate in young nurses as this can help them work better with other staff members and improve patient care by reducing errors.
