Bridging Campus and Communities: Best practices for mentoring clinical preceptors of online nurse practitioner students

The purpose of this presentation is to describe best practices for engaging preceptors who provide clinical mentoring for nurse practitioner students enrolled in distance education programs.

Concomitant clinical and didactic learning is a vital component of scholarship for advanced practice nursing students.  Effective partnerships between university faculty, community providers/preceptors, and students are requisite elements of formative learning.  Forging partnerships in distance education presents unique challenges that require a well-orchestrated plan to assure that both students and preceptors are supported in the clinical setting. Engaged preceptors can serve as a vital link, bridging a student’s local community to the distant university.

While preceptors are clinical experts, they will require faculty support as they hone the role of clinical mentor. Creation of focused preceptor resources, targeting needs of distant preceptors, improves the connection between the students, preceptors and the university. Provision of a comprehensive preceptor handbook, including programmatic information, curriculum mapping, role clarification, clinical expectation and policies, evaluation processes, and faculty contact will help to assure a successful mentoring relationship. 

Clinical evaluation of distant students and sites can present distinctive challenges. In addition to traditional face-to-face encounters, faculty can enhance distance clinical experiences through integration of technology to enable virtual clinical conferences with preceptors.  This is particularly beneficial for first time preceptors who often require additional faculty support.

Providing preceptors with a theoretical framework and concrete examples for problem solving may bolster preceptor confidence and clinical teaching skills. Introducing clinical teaching models, such as the One-Minute Preceptor can provide structure to experiential learning, enhance the process for both the preceptor and the adult learner, improve time management, and facilitate critical thinking.  

Best practices in clinical precepting provide nurse practitioners with a framework for integrating clinical mentoring into daily clinical practice. Clinical mentoring leads to increased satisfaction of the clinical learning experience for both the preceptor and clinical student, contributes to the professional development of the preceptor, promotes improved learning outcomes for the students, integrates evidence based practice into the clinical learning exchange, and helps to prepare the next generation of advanced practice nurses to become clinically competent and emotionally reflective providers.