Nurse practitioner preceptors' perceived facilitators and barriers to precepting.

Abstract

Background: Preceptors are an integral part of nurse practitioner (NP) education; they mentor students and facilitate experiential learning in the clinical setting. Understanding factors that motivate clinicians to serve as preceptors can inform recruitment and retention of preceptors.

Purpose: To understand factors that motivate and challenge clinicians to choose to precept NP students.

Methodology: A survey was emailed to preceptors of NP students asking them to rate the importance of factors on a scale from not at all important (1) to extremely important (5) in influencing their decision to precept. Factors were categorized into five domains: university process, finance/time/productivity, recognition, certification/education, and intrinsic/other. Descriptive statistics were calculated.

Results: Seventy-three of 224 preceptors responded (33% response rate). Highly rated motivating factors included having the role of preceptor clearly defined (mean = 4.00, SD = 1.01), coworkers support (mean = 4.07, SD = 0.91), and enjoying precepting NP students (Mean = 4.32, SD = 0.72). Lowest rated motivating factors include faculty presence during site visit (Mean = 2.74, SD = 1.11), financial renumeration (M = 2.13, SD = 1.38), and receiving gifts (mean = 1.66, SD = 0.98).

Conclusion: Our findings indicate having coworkers who are supportive of their role as a preceptor, and clearly defined roles are more important than financial renumeration and faculty site visits.

Implications for practice: Building relationships with staff, administrators, and preceptors could strengthen academic-clinical partnerships resulting in an environment supportive of precepting NP students. Faculty may be able to reduce travel to clinic sites by communicating more frequently through email or telephone.