Public Health clinical site preceptor advice

[SiwanRN]

Hi all! I am a public health nurse with ~5 years experience. I work in a county health department, specifically in the family planning clinic. My health department has relationships with several of the nursing schools in my area and we have nursing students every fall and spring. I love getting the chance to spend time with nursing students when they rotate through my section of the health department. Until very recently, the way we have handled student rotations is for the nursing supervisor of a program to coordinate their placements in various areas of the health department and for that nursing supervisor to act as their preceptor for their entire block of time with us. Going forward, we will still have a nursing supervisor acting as the overall coordinator for their time with us, but we are designating a student preceptor for each clinical rotation site that they rotate through.

By now I bet you can guess who the student preceptor is for the family planning area. I am excited to help educate student nurses and share our passion for public health and family planning when they come through my area. I am looking for any tips or recommendations you may have for being an effective clinical site preceptor. It's a little different from their rotations in an acute care setting because there isn't as much opportunity for skill demonstrations beyond providing immunizations or patient teaching, and I want to maximize their experience while they are with me. Prior to now they have just kind of been turned loose in the clinic to observe whatever appointments and participate in cares that they can with very little direction. Are there any tools or worksheets that would be helpful for their rotation with us to help guide their learning?

My idea thus far was to develop a worksheet with some questions that they can fill out before they come in, some questions they can do during their rotation (generally 4-8 hour blocks of time), and some questions for later at the end of the day. I'd like to know when they come in what are 2 or 3 learning goals/objectives they have for their time with us and anything in particular they would like to see or do while they are with us. Perhaps during their rotation some other items on the worksheet might be how they can see evidence of the 10 essential services of public health being done in the family planning area, how population level nursing is different from direct patient care, etc, and then discuss those items at the end of their time in family planning before they leave.

Would that be helpful to help their learning process? Is there something better I can do or use, or other things I haven't thought about? Other public health nursing things I should include on such an assignment? I am not nursing education faculty, so I appreciate any insight that you all might have.

Thank you!