Mentoring Preceptors

[BonnieSc]

I am introducing a sort of preceptorship model on Monday at my hospital (I work as a staff educator but also with the students who rotate through the hospital; there is minimal involvement from the school clinical instructors). Up to now the students have been assigned to nurses and a patient assignment, but they function as a sort of assistant, doing both nursing and aide tasks. More like shadowing, but with a greater emphasis on aide work than I had when I was a student.

I have one advanced student who is here for several weeks, and now that he knows the floor, I want him to start taking two patients, planning their care, prioritizing, etc... "real nursing".

Any suggestions on how I can explain this role to the nurses? I need to make sure they understand the patients are still "theirs" but they are also "his". This is a new concept. Pitfalls to avoid that you've seen with preceptors?

If this works well, I hope to make it work for more students, at least those in the last year of nursing school. They usually only come to my floor for two weeks, but possibly we could do one week of "shadow/aide" and one of precepting. I'm trying to remember my own school experiences--if we had one or two days on a floor or unit we just shadowed, but we never had two weeks that I can think of. It was a couple of days or it was at least four weeks. (Though we never had 50 hours per week like these students do! Basically, they have 100 hours on surgical--a month's worth of clinicals or more for me.) Not sure whether it will be effective or not for them to "take patients".

[meanmaryjean, DNP, RN]

Wow! What type of school is this? This should not be your responsibility. And how are they to learn to be nurses if they don't 'take patients'? I am confused.

[BonnieSc]

It IS my responsibility, it's my job! I'm in Africa, but since very few people here have any idea what things are like in Africa, I wanted a wider perspective. The issue of mentoring preceptors is fairly universal, even if preceptorship as a "new concept" isn't. As to when they learn to be nurses... well, that's sort of lip service so far (that they should be learning any more than how to push a pill and change a dressing), but I hope to change that. From what I've observed of the nurses on my floor, some come by it naturally, some pick it up at work, and some have never learned.

[meanmaryjean, DNP, RN]

Ah- NOW I understand. So sorry- I did nut catch that you were not in the US!

[BonnieSc]

It's going better than I expected and the student is really finding it valuable to take patients... but the nurses sure miss having a lackey. I found today he'd given meds for all his nurse's patients, not just his two. Grrrrr!