Anxious about my upcoming preceptorship!

[Guss]

Hi everyone,

I am in my last semester of nursing school and I will be starting my preceptorship on a med/surg floor. I am excited for it, but also pretty nervous about it.  I feel like I don't know what to expect from a preceptorship? Is it mainly where I am shadowing my nurse and picking up how their tricks and trades & learning how a nurses day basically will go like? Basically how was your guys' preceptorship?

Do you guys have any tips heading into this preceptorship to help my nerves out? I've always done well on my nursing exams throughout nursing school, but I have personally felt more weak on the clinical side if that makes sense.. Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

[kayji, BSN]

I suppose the answer depends a little on your school and preceptor. For my program, the final preceptorship is meant to help you transition into doing the nurse's job. I'm not sure what you mean by "shadowing" but if you are only watching over their shoulder, you aren't really getting the full experience. It's an opportunity to take on more and more of the nurse's role as you work together, while you still have someone available to guide you and give you their tips and tricks.

So, yes, it's about learning how the day goes, but its also time to start being the one organizing the day and taking care of the patients.

[Nature_walker, ASN, BSN, RN]

Be honest with your preceptor about where you are and how you are feeling. An open conversation can go a long ways. When I was precepting, I had my students follow along for a shift or two and then slowly start having them take over small things and then we worked up to bigger things. I had a weekly check in to see how they were feeling about everything and if there was something they wanted more work/experience on. We didn't have a set case load as I was in the psych ED at the time, so we just let everyone know that if X,Y, or Z happened to let us know so my preceptee could get more experience. I loved teaching the students and I do miss that at my current job. 

Good luck and have fun. You'll learn a ton and just be open to everything even if it's not something you love you can always learn from it.