Developing and Mentoring APN Faculty to Build Precepting Competencies, Increase Satisfaction, and Expand Training Capacity

At present, the prevailing mode for preceptors to learn how to precept is “on the job.” Productivity and documentation requirements are the same regardless of whether student supervision is part of the day’s workload, with the usual practice being that the student sees part of the preceptor’s caseload for the day. For APN preceptors, the challenge of maintaining workflow while precepting a student can be daunting, especially when the only prior experience may be personal recollections of being precepted. Given the ever-increasing need for productivity, quality clinical practicum opportunities are a fragile and scarce resource across primary care. Will there be enough skilled preceptors to train the next generation of APN providers in the numbers needed? Precepting students has been a core activity of our APN faculty since the 1997 inception of our faculty practice, The Center for Integrated Health Care. While precepting APN students at IHC has been ongoing and we have worked to enhance student learning through a schedule of supplementary activities, our support and development of the preceptor role has been largely informal, relying on our precepting manual,impromptu discussions at IHC team meetings, and informal consultations with other faculty. This presentation will describe and elicit attendee comments on the development to date of a best-practices training program to develop clinical teachers for next generations of APN providers. Developed collectively by our IHC faculty preceptors and incorporating applicable NONPF monographs and the clinical teaching literature from nursing and medicine, our presentation will include: outcomes of the initial learning needs assessment of faculty preceptors; results of the think tank held to identify training program components addressing the learning needs; and the training curriculum plan including workshops, team meeting discussions, and collaborative mentoring for new and experienced faculty preceptors.