Your Practice: 12 Tips for New Preceptors

12 Tips for a New Preceptor

Precepting experts from Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center share lessons learned for nurses stepping into the preceptor role.

Is a transition to nurse preceptor on your radar? Well, you have perfect timing because a wave of new nurses are expected to enter the periop profession in 2023. Precepting is also a great way to explore an interest in education.

However, precepting is no simple task to jump into, and the changing landscape of health care brings its own unique challenges.

We wondered what it takes to be a successful preceptor today, so we asked JohnRich Levine, DPA, DNP, MSN, MHA, MPA, APRN, CNOR, CSSM, CNE, NEA-BC, a longtime preceptor and creator of the STAR Preceptor Class at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center in Houston, Texas.

Levine asked his top preceptors their advice for a new preceptor, and he shared his own lessons learned from training preceptors.

His advice to an aspiring preceptor: “Start with a clear self-concept of how you see yourself in a preceptor role because we teach what we are. And remember, a preceptor is a gatekeeper between the colleague in training, patients, and management—a resource and simultaneous motivator.”

With your mindset ready for precepting success, here are 12 tips from preceptors currently working in periop settings across the Baylor St. Luke’s campuses:

1. Take a Preceptor Class

You will learn how to hone time management skills, give clear/concise instruction, improve your situational awareness, and govern your actions and reactions to be a better, more effective preceptor. You will also master the skills for self and learner assessment and gain versatility in communication styles and approaches.

2. Know Your Teaching Style

Everyone learns differently, but everyone teaches differently too. Take a hard look at yourself to make sure you are setting your orientees up for success.

3. Have a Transformational Leadership Style

The world has changed after COVID-19, and a preceptor must have the ability to transform to meet the new and demanding conditions.

4. Embrace Patience

Not every preceptee will remember a task after you show them one time. It might take several times for them to be at your level of expertise. Nor will every preceptee need you to teach them the basics repeatedly. Find out what they want to learn first and add what you think they need to know as situations dictate.

5. Be Flexible

You need an agenda and a plan to start with a new preceptee, but you will also need to adapt to the preceptees' capabilities, knowledge, and learning curve. Be willing and able to shift gears and be mindful of their abilities above your agenda.

6. Socialize

Make the preceptee feel wanted, needed, and included. This will make them feel like they are a part of the team, which will increase their satisfaction and hopefully keep them on your team to reduce turnover.

7. Have Heart

A good preceptor must have the heart to teach, and then balance this with the knowledge and clinical experience to fulfill the orientees' needs.

8. Listen

Be deliberate with your listening and open mindedness. These are important emotional intelligence skills that will help make a connection with a preceptee.

9. Ask and Encourage Questions

Make sure your preceptee feels comfortable asking questions so they ask for help with procedures or tasks they are unfamiliar with. Model this by making sure to ask the right questions that elicit the kind of response you are looking for from a learner.

10. Use Your Preceptor Resources

Teach the preceptor techniques you learned during preceptor training and make use of any guides or other resources you’ve gathered along the way to handle nursing students and new nurses.

11. Keep Learning

Look for learning opportunities in your specialty on a continuous basis. Nobody is an expert in all things, and even a preceptor should still be asking questions and seeking more knowledge to have broad knowledge of the periop nurse role to pass on.

12. Have Fun

The preceptor role takes a process to master. It is like a one-stop-shop that has everything you need but scattered in a huge shopping mall. You'll have to walk the distance.

Responses from Frida Talabi, RN, coordinator and preceptor at PACU- McNair Campus; Somi Mathew, RN, preceptor at Cooley 6A ICU; Tara Williams, RN, preceptor at Day Surgery; and Jacqueline Griffin, RN, preceptor at Endoscopy.