New Nurses Precepting Students/New Hires?

[All4NursingRN]

So the other day at work one of my co-workers (2 years out of school) was teamed with a nursing student. Now this particular nurse is still somewhat shaky about his skills- good nurse but not super confident (although he's one of managements favorites sooo you know how that goes)

I ask him how's it going having a student and he says it's ok (just alittle overwhelmed).

Why would you put a nurse with less than 3 years experience to precept?

Like really?

I feel confident in my abilities, but with just 15 months experience I will say HECK NO! to precepting. I think I know alot, but there's way more I don't know and I have no right teaching anyone else at this stage!

Anyway he is management's love puppy (well atleast one mangers') so I guess someone is trying to make him look good.

[CrufflerJJ, BSN, RN, EMT-P]

but then again, i'm widely considered to be nuts.

that's ok. just listen to the voices. that works for me.

[lockheart678]

Where I work, pretty much everyone precepts at some point or another, regardless of how much experience they have. It kills me to see the brand new nurses who have been on their own for a month training someone new. At that stage, I don't care how confident they may act, they are still figuring themselves out and have no business teaching someone else. My department is so short staffed, we really don't have a choice though. I've got 3 years of experience and, sadly, I'm getting into the same category as the people who have been there forever.

When I was a student, most of the time the best nurses to learn from were the ones who did only have 1-3 years of experience. They were usually the ones who were a lot more receptive to having a student and I got to practice my skills a lot more than with the more seasoned nurses. On the flip side, I remember one old lady who had been a nurse way longer than I have even been alive, and she was the most hateful, rude person I had ever worked with. I purposely avoided her just because I got sick of her complaining about everything, and she never taught me a thing. Between her and the lazy nurses who worked with her who tried to get me to give medications by myself, I ended up going to my clinical instructor and had her move me to a different unit. That was the best thing I ever could have done.

[SandraCVRN]

While I'm not a new nurse I am new back to the floor and had never worked on a Cardiac IMC.

On my first day off orientation a student came up to me, I sadly had to turn her down. I had precepted many students and new nurses when I worked ortho and in the OR. I said I needed to work by myself first, LOL. But the next day when another student showed up (I had the same group of GOOD pts) I said sure. The student and I both had a great day. I always loved precepting and the student told me she saw and learned more in that day then her entire first semester.

I love teaching :-)

[azcna]

I've been precepted by nurses with 6 months experience. Just depends who is on the floor that day.

[Selene006, BSN, LPN]

(Why would you put a nurse with less than 3 years experience to precept?

Like really? )

I was precepted by two nurses who graduated 3 months before I did. We were all working on the subacute rehab unit and there was a high staffing turnover rate. Half the time, I felt like neither women wanted to precept me because they both complained about how much they hated the facility and hated precepting every single person who was hired. Those nurses stayed for about a year, and then I continued the trend of precepting others, even at a moment's notice from the DON. I think we were all burned out after a year, but it certainly taught me that (some of) the administrations we work for couldn't care less about what happens on the nursing units. All that matters is that there is a warm body passing meds and completing the paperwork...

[VICEDRN, BSN, RN]

No idea what you are talking about...i live in the southeast and it is typical for nurses in my area to precept and charge after their first year. (though i have yet to see an ER charge with less than 3 years but my friends have all done it on floors and in ICUs)

Some of the junior staff nurses are way better at it then some of the senior staff nurses and some of the senior staff refuse to work with new grads. it depends on the person and how their skills have developed.

[VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN]

I'm kind of amazed at the idea that nurses with less than 2 years experience working as preceptors is somehow a new thing. Thought it's been done that way for years.........I think I'd been at my hospital job for a whole six weeks when I was asked to precept. Granted, it wasn't my first rodeo---I'd worked there as a CNA, and had some RN experience in LTC in between---but I was flabbergasted when they asked me to take on a new grad nurse.

Well, I've always loved to teach, and in fact had been on the faculty of the community college as a substitute clinical instructor (this was before they started requiring the BSN to teach clinicals). And what I found out was, teaching someone else reinforces your own learning......it makes you better at what you do. Working with the new grad helped me get over some of my own nervousness in dealing with acute situations---after all, somebody had to keep a clear head!---and as her skills grew, it made me proud of how far we'd both come in a short time. :)

[PeepnBiscuitsRN]

HAR! I precepted students when I was about 4-5 months into my job in a peds clinic when I was an LPN! They were students from the same school I went to. Was I a tad shaky? Well, yes- but my managers asked me specifically if I would be willing to, and a few other co workers "nominated" me (in other words, they didn't want to do it). So, there were things that my students and I learned together. I got good feedback and I was preceptor for all the 4.5 years I worked as an LPN at that clinic. I'd say the only think I had to work on was laying down the smack on some of the "not so fun to have to deal with" students (ones who ditched out early and lied about it, and later questioned the MD's competence who was doing the circ she was permitted to stand in on...the ingrate.) Or the ones who skeptically questioned every. stinkin. move. I. made. Like she was a clinical instructor and I was the student...the ingrate.

Anyways, near the end it was getting a little tiresome. They got graded for observing, I got paid to do my job, teach, and make patients and docs happy. Sometimes hard to do. Heh, one time I had a student who literally followed so close to me that if I stopped reasonably quick she'd trip over my heels!

[Vespertinas]

I think a few months is far too little experience to precept. But after a year I believe a conscientious RN can get a student. This activity turned out to be useful in many ways on my old floor. For nurses who were not confident about their abilities, my manager would use this experience to validate their positive habits. "You practice safely, don't you?" she would say. Well all a student RN needs sometimes is just the experience of integrating the nursing process that they learned in school into a real-world situation. Just reinforcing what safe nursing practice is anywhere can constitute an adequate learning experience for a student RN. By the end of her preceptorship, that floor RN who the manager believed in would emerge a more confident and therefore effective professional.

For floor nurses who were already confident, precepting a student RN became an incredible learning opportunity. Since you now are responsible for not just youself and your patients but ALSO another student, I found myself constantly double checking my facts and looking up information just so I could be sure I knew everything about what I was doing and I was doing it correctly. It challanged me to come up with answers that I might not have otherwise sought out on my own. It instilled early in my career the taste for leadership and striving for excellence. I'm afraid if I didn't get that opportunity early on, the window of time when I was still being molded would have closed and I would have become a jaded RN content to do my basic duties.

[CompleteUnknown]

I'm kind of amazed at the idea that nurses with less than 2 years experience working as preceptors is somehow a new thing. Thought it's been done that way for years.........I think I'd been at my hospital job for a whole six weeks when I was asked to precept. Granted, it wasn't my first rodeo---I'd worked there as a CNA, and had some RN experience in LTC in between---but I was flabbergasted when they asked me to take on a new grad nurse.

Well, I've always loved to teach, and in fact had been on the faculty of the community college as a substitute clinical instructor (this was before they started requiring the BSN to teach clinicals). And what I found out was, teaching someone else reinforces your own learning......it makes you better at what you do. Working with the new grad helped me get over some of my own nervousness in dealing with acute situations---after all, somebody had to keep a clear head!---and as her skills grew, it made me proud of how far we'd both come in a short time. :)

I'm another one who is surprised that people see something wrong with this. I was raised up in the days of hospital based education and the old see one do one teach one method was used extensively. Sometimes the student nurse doing the teaching was as much as 3 months more senior than we were! We were only be allowed to be totally clueless for about 3 months because by then it was time for us to start taking our turn at the 'teach one' side of things. :)

It was emphasised that it was one of our professional responsibilities to share our knowledge with those with less experience and that didn't end when we graduated.

[Been there,done that, ASN, RN]

I see you haven't heard of

See one..

Do one...

Teach one.

It's the name of the game in nursing.

[sbostonRN]

I have less than a year experience and have trained/oriented two new grads on my unit so far. They've both been very successful and I love being able to share my new knowledge with them. The downside: I've since discovered that I don't do everything correctly and that I've taught them bad technique in some cases. But I suppose the same thing could happen to a veteran nurse too.