Top 10 Reasons to Become a Preceptor There are a million and one articles online and in print about the value of preceptorship to new students. However, far less has been written about the value of becoming a preceptor yourself. What are the benefits to you, your patients, your facility and your students? Your day is already manic, why is this something that you should consider as a possibility? Perhaps you, you, benefited from a really great preceptor early in your career, and you are now thinking about whether or not it’s something that you should consider taking part in. Perhaps you are at a stage in your career where you feel like you have enough knowledge and experience that it’s worthwhile to start passing it on. Maybe you’ve recently experienced a new nursing colleague and been able to pass on advice that has helped him or her on her way, and think that it’s something that you would enjoy doing in a more structured environment. In this article, we’re going to explore the top ten reasons for becoming a preceptor, and why it’s something that you need in your life. 1. Improve patient services and patient outcomes There can be little doubt that great nurses passing on their experience and knowledge to future generations are good for patients and clinical outcomes. Finding your way blind is rarely a good way to become great at your chosen profession - it involves learning from your mistakes, but to do that, you need to make them in the first place! It’s far better to come from the angle of knowing what to expect and how to deal with it.
Preempting could help a novice nurse avoid the problems that you ran into, and allow them to spend their time growing rather than fixing errors. Related: Happy Nurses Lead To Happy Patients 2.
Develop Care Programs
One of the many benefits of presenting is that it forces you to think of the clinical area as a learning environment as well as a medical one. In ensuring that there are learning opportunities for your student, you will look at your patient pathways more critically, and this, in turn, could help you to fill in gaps in care that have been missed by doing things the same way that they have always been done. 3.
Attain Personal Satisfaction and Professional Growth
In much the same way that perception will allow you to look at patient care in a new light, it will also allow you to be more critical of your own professional development. Through talking to your student, you may well find that there are areas in your own practice that you are less confident in; perception could help open your eyes to training that you require or desire yourself. 4.
Introduce Students to ‘Real World’ Experiences
We all know that nursing is about more than what happens on the ward or in the OP department. One of the hardest lessons to learn as a nurse is how to balance your career (and duty) with family life. How do you respond when a nursing situation challenges your own morals or judgments? Deal with difficult patients or colleagues? Cope with stress, fatigue or disillusionment? Eventually, all new nurses will have to deal with these situations, and being equipped with advice from a senior colleague can make them much less stressful when they do happen.
5.
Keep Up To Date with New Treatments and Clinical
Developments Being responsible for the training and development of a new nurse will definitely help you with your own continuing professional development. Not only will they bring their own enthusiasm for learning to your clinical environment, but you will also find that you are constantly on the lookout for new things to teach and discuss with them. 6.
Be Part of the Evolution of Your Profession
If you are feeling dissatisfied with the way that your profession is going, perception can be a great way to feel that you are influencing its future path in a positive way. Feel like new nurses are all about the clinical environment and have forgotten about patient care? This is your opportunity to help someone understand the value of both. A good preceptor will improve the outcomes for both student and patient, and encourage good habits which will last a lifetime. Related: Organization Tips You Need to Know 7.
Give Back to the Profession
This goes back to influencing the future of nursing - you know what you’ve done to be proud of, and what your colleagues have done. Allowing the next generation to understand what worked for the last will benefit them, their patients and the profession as a whole. Providing a framework for the future of nursing will allow it to go forward maintaining the same standards that you expect on your wards today.
8.
Because You Remember the Benefit of Having a Great
Preceptor Yourself If like many of us, you can still hear that one bit of advice from a great mentor every time you encounter a certain situation, you’ll already understand the benefits of preceptors hip. It’s amazing to think that you can pass on learning from a lifetime of nursing that can help a new nurse almost instantly. 9.
Because nothing is more exciting than Sharing Your Passion
with Someone New This benefit can also extend both ways - if you’re feeling a little jaded, or that there’s nothing new to learn, working with someone who is new to the profession can help stir memories of why you became a nurse in the first place. There is nothing like experiencing the enthusiasm of someone new to a job to rekindle the original passion that you, yourself, once had. 10.
Because You Have a Wealth of Experience that Deserves to
be shared. Think about what you did yesterday, and about all of the small problems that you encountered. You probably solved most of them without thinking about it, because over the years that you have been nursing you have developed a myriad of strategies and procedures to do so. These are skills that you never read about it in books, or are told about in lectures. They are either developed on the job, or by being told about them by someone who has learned from personal experience. In summary, then, it’s probably fair to say that the majority of this article can be distilled into one, major reason - to give back to nursing and
ensure that future generations of nurses benefit from the same timeless and crucial values that brought you to nursing yourself. There can be little doubt that financial considerations are very important when treating patients in this day and age. No doubt it’s something that you have experienced on an almost daily basis throughout your career. Preempting is one way in which you will be able to influence future nurses to be able to balance the financial considerations of their institution with the needs and wellbeing of their patients, and ensure that the core values of nursing are not diluted. Whichever your reason for choosing to go down the route of becoming a preceptor, you can be assured that future generations of both staff and patients will thank you for passing on your hard learned lessons and that you yourself will benefit from the process. Related: Leading Registered Nurse Dawne Cheryline Ambrose, RN to be Published in the Worldwide Leaders in Healthcare as New Member of the International Nurses Association Please follow us on Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest and Twitter