Preceptorships

[bassbird]

I'm starting my last year of nursing school in a couple of weeks and am trying to figure out what area I want to do my preceptorship in. We don't start our main clinical rotations until this year (OB, peds, 2 med-surg, and psych) but we are supposed to know what we want to do for a preceptorship by October! I have a couple of areas that I am interested in, but how can you know until you get there! Has anyone else been in this situation and if so how did you pick your area?

I am interested in surgery, hospice or oncology, and critical care. Does anyone have any suggestions for making a decision? I have called the surgery supervisor at the hospital I work in, in order to observe more surgery and talk with some of the nurses there. I guess I'm just confused and look forward to hearing any ideas or experiences others can share.

Thanks,

Roberta

[BrandyBSN]

if your main interest are surgery, hospice or oncology, and critical care, i would go for critical care. In critical care, you will find oncology patients, dying patients, and surgical patients. You will probably get a good dose to all of the areas you seem to be interested in.

As for me, My clinical elective will be in the ER, and ICU.

Good luck!

BrandyBSN

[Katnip, RN]

Yes, I know how you feel. I don't even start the basic nursing classes for two weeks and they wanted to know what area we wanted to do for preceptorship last month. It's tough, but I ended up choosing ICU/ER/Trauma because of what I've learned on web sites and because I know some things I don't want.

Don't worry, though. Just because you pick one, it doesn't mean you're trapped for life.