Finding Preceptors?

allnurses Guide · Sep 9, 2014

Personally/professionally I believe programs should take responsibility for preceptors but the trend is the other direction.

It sounds like there are not many programs in your area so it may be a little easier to find preceptors than over saturated areas.

Your state NP association can often be a good starting point; they often have a free or minimal fee student member rate and this can get you plugged into an established network.

The other thing you can/should do is ask the program if they have some alumni you can talk to. Recent alums will be able to give you a heads-up and potentially a contact for good preceptors. Many programs also have a FB group for their cohort or for alums that may help with some preceptor ideas.

PMFB-RN, RN · Sep 9, 2014

Personally/professionally I believe programs should take responsibility for preceptors but the trend is the other direction.
It sounds like there are not many programs in your area so it may be a little easier to find preceptors than over saturated areas.
Your state NP association can often be a good starting point; they often have a free or minimal fee student member rate and this can get you plugged into an established network.
The other thing you can/should do is ask the program if they have some alumni you can talk to. Recent alums will be able to give you a heads-up and potentially a contact for good preceptors. Many programs also have a FB group for their cohort or for alums that may help with some preceptor ideas.

Thank you for the tips.

zmansc, ASN, RN · Sep 16, 2014

OP - I would suggest you start to network with the provider community in your area now. There is constant debate on this site over the +/- of finding one's own preceptor. I can tell you that many have very difficult times finding preceptors and take whatever they can find. Others, network ahead of time, and are able to get a feel for the providers in their area, even identify multiple preceptors for various patient populations and pick from the best. I have cohorts in my classes in both situations. The key difference is those who start networking early, often before even applying to programs are in much better situation than those who wait until the last minute.

HarryTheCat, MSN, RN · Sep 16, 2014

The mistake that most people make is that they think they can just make a bunch of phone calls and something will turn up. My wife was faced with the same problem. After making a dozen or so very fruitless calls, she decided to change the game. She printed up some resumes, had some "business cards" made up, and then hit the streets. She made up a list of a couple of dozen places to start out with and simply walked in and asked to speak with someone. On just her third "cold call" to a clinic, she was ushered in to meet the clinic director, and walked out with a firm commitment and a preceptor assigned. Problem solved.

EBP for Preceptor Hunting:

1) There is no substitute for person-to-person contact. Phone calls and voice mail messages are easily dismissed, but when you are a "real person" it makes you hard to ignore.

2) Dress for an interview. If you present yourself as a professional it will go a long way to show that you mean business.

3) Go prepared with copies of your resume, and make sure that it's both current and specifically tailored to your objective. Proof read it until you can't stand to look at it any more, then proof read it again. It should be "bulletproof".

4) Start your search early. If you wait until the week before classes start to begin your search, you're too late. You should be lining up your preceptor for your spring semester by August or September.

Hope this helps!

futureeastcoastNP · Sep 16, 2014

The mistake that most people make is that they think they can just make a bunch of phone calls and something will turn up. My wife was faced with the same problem. After making a dozen or so very fruitless calls, she decided to change the game. She printed up some resumes, had some "business cards" made up, and then hit the streets. She made up a list of a couple of dozen places to start out with and simply walked in and asked to speak with someone. On just her third "cold call" to a clinic, she was ushered in to meet the clinic director, and walked out with a firm commitment and a preceptor assigned. Problem solved.
EBP for Preceptor Hunting:
1) There is no substitute for person-to-person contact. Phone calls and voice mail messages are easily dismissed, but when you are a "real person" it makes you hard to ignore.
2) Dress for an interview. If you present yourself as a professional it will go a long way to show that you mean business.
3) Go prepared with copies of your resume, and make sure that it's both current and specifically tailored to your objective. Proof read it until you can't stand to look at it any more, then proof read it again. It should be "bulletproof".
4) Start your search early. If you wait until the week before classes start to begin your search, you're too late. You should be lining up your preceptor for your spring semester by August or September.
Hope this helps!

This is way too much to point on a student. Schools should be doing this themselves. Could you imagine medical students marching around town with resumes looking for clinicals and taking whatever they can get? They would never stand for it and the schools would be closed down

allnurses Guide · Sep 16, 2014

This is way too much to point on a student. Schools should be doing this themselves. Could you imagine medical students marching around town with resumes looking for clinicals and taking whatever they can get? They would never stand for it and the schools would be closed down

Medical students often find their own preceptors in their 3rd year for primary care/family clerkship. But this is supported fully by the program is is not required.

But also remember, some medical students don't match for residencies, that blame is placed on the student not the program. If NPs had a similar national system it would be fantastic.

Sent from my iPhone.

futureeastcoastNP · Sep 16, 2014

Medical students often find their own preceptors in their 3rd year for primary care/family clerkship. But this is supported fully by the program is is not required.
Sent from my iPhone.

Thats the school giving them some flexibility regarding less than 5% of their overall clinical hours when residency is factored in, with the vast majority of med student hours still being entirely set up and facilitated by the school with major oversight. And, as you said, it is optional. The image I see here is a bright med student who knows a doctor he shadowed during undergrad and is given the chance to do a rotation with him if he so chooses. Contrast this with the online NP student cold calling offices and begging on allnurses threads, willing to drive up to 2 hours if they can just find ANYONE so they don't fail out of use program. The situations are not at all analogous. Far from it. One is to allow flexibility and expand horizons while the other is the shifting of responsibility on the gullible student so the schools don't have to deal with it or pay for it, and can take maximum students without the limiting factor of running out of preceptors.

All the accrediting agencies have to do is add one simple little clause to the accreditation requirements and we could fix so many issues in NP education: schools must provide preceptors. Suddenly, the for profits would no longer be interested (benefit #1), remaining programs would take less students and become more selective (benefit #2), probably begin requiring more out of candidates such as higher GRE scores and interviews (benefit #3), clinicals would be more structured (benefit #4), and unintelligent nurses who seem to be able to get into NP programs due to lax standards and for profit programs taking anyone would finally be kept away from the provider role (benefit #6). It would also have the effect of increasing the professional image, stopping oversaturation, raising salaries, etc.

Too bad all the boards care about is money and power.

PMFB-RN, RN · Sep 17, 2014

All the accrediting agencies have to do is add one simple little clause to the accreditation requirements and we could fix so many issues in NP education: schools must provide preceptors. Suddenly, the for profits would no longer be interested (benefit #1), remaining programs would take less students and become more selective (benefit #2), probably begin requiring more out of candidates such as higher GRE scores and interviews (benefit #3), clinicals would be more structured (benefit #4), and unintelligent nurses who seem to be able to get into NP programs due to lax standards and for profit programs taking anyone would finally be kept away from the provider role (benefit #6). It would also have the effect of increasing the professional image, stopping oversaturation, raising salaries, etc.
Too bad all the boards care about is money and power.

I don't disagree with you and you make good points. One concern I have is that I live in a very rural, medicaly underserved area. The closest NP program is a 3 hour drive away. This area has many small, rural, critical access hospitals who are desperatly short of providers. Most people are not attracted to the area and recruiting medical professionals is very difficult. The best way to get good providers is to train nurses who already live here and have no plans on leaving. Oppertunities for NP training are very limited.

Schools should provide and closely supervise preceptors. However I would rather there is some oppertunity to train local experienced nurses to be NPs to serve an area that very much needs them and if finding your own preceptors is the only way to make that happen then it is a price that needs to be paid. At least in our circumstances.

zmansc, ASN, RN · Sep 17, 2014

I don't disagree with you and you make good points. One concern I have is that I live in a very rural, medicaly underserved area. The closest NP program is a 3 hour drive away. This area has many small, rural, critical access hospitals who are desperatly short of providers. Most people are not attracted to the area and recruiting medical professionals is very difficult. The best way to get good providers is to train nurses who already live here and have no plans on leaving. Oppertunities for NP training are very limited.
Schools should provide and closely supervise preceptors. However I would rather there is some oppertunity to train local experienced nurses to be NPs to serve an area that very much needs them and if finding your own preceptors is the only way to make that happen then it is a price that needs to be paid. At least in our circumstances.

To add to this point it has been shown that if a student has to relocate to go to school there is a much higher percentage who will not come back than if they can do the schoolwork in their home location. Therefore, by offering programs that allow us to recommend our own preceptors, the nursing profession is fulfilling a fundamental goal to help increase rural providers.

Personally, I don't see it as a bad thing to have students find and identify the preceptor they are going to work with. It is not a trivial thing to do, and if you want to turn this over to your program, more power to you. However, programs have existed for several decades that have had students identify preceptors and to my knowledge their is no evidence that this has negatively impacted education programs.

ryguyRN · Sep 24, 2014

When I first started my program I was very frustrated trying to find my own preceptors but once you make your first connection it should get easier, it did for me. I am in my final semester and I have two very good preceptors, you just have to put in the work and network. It is a skill that we need to develop anyway.