What To Expect From Your Preceptor

Two thumbs up!

Love it.My first preceptors: Michele, I love you! She put up with my immaturity and fear (covered by bravado) and helped me assimilate and not kill anyone. Dawn scared the crap out of me, but taught me to run a tight ship.My BEST mentors: C, J and G, and also P and Geri: COBs with claws and heart. They taught me how to draw blood, how to teach, how to be selfless, how to be SELFISH (as in, taking a LUNCH) that if you wear lipstick you look and feel better, and how to find things out for myself. J, P and Geri are some of my best friends and always will be. I am so lucky to have them in my lives. My patients are lucky that I learned from the best.

To Meredith, Andrea, and Kathy: thank you!

My preceptor was and still is an awesome nurse; but taught way over my new grad head & would disappear for hours at a time! I called it "self-orientation"! My orientation taught me self-reliance, how to look up stuff, and when to ask questions! It also taught me how NOT to precept others.I've been precepting others for over a decade now. I try to keep it simple & give lots of feedback. When I push you, it's only because I know you can do it! When I ask you questions, it's not a trick; I'm trying to figure out how you think! I can change up my teaching style only if you don't respond well, but 95% do well so I must be doing ok. I only claim to be smart, not brilliant, so it's ok to correct me if I'm wrong! I can only make you as good a nurse as you put in the effort to adapt to suggestions. I also warn orientees of my faults: I'm not really awake until I'm nearly done with my coffee so don't ask too complex a question until then; I'm cranky when I'm hungry; do it my way unless I say it's ok otherwise; I'll tell you my pet peeves up front so don't do them because it's usually a safety thing. My orientees are my friends by the end and they usually have a hard time letting me go...

dah doh, you sound like an awesome preceptor. I hope whomever I get is as good as you sound.

Currently, I enjoy that I'm in an atmosphere where there are many nurses with different teaching style but their knowledge comes through in order to be meaningful and create better nurses-I couldn't ask for anything more.I hope to be able to precept as successful as the nurses who precepted me once I learn this be specialty.I have precepted in the past and my biggest thing was thinking things through, ensuring reason and rationale for actions, and staying organized in order to think; I'm big on mental lists and brain sheets when needed; and I like to ensure a "teach back" method when possible. I also like to preach the 3 C's of becoming a proficient nurse: competency, consistency, and confidence.

Love this!!! I like the part that you may not like them and they may not like you but you can still learn from them. My first preceptor right out of nursing school, hated me and made my life a personal and I almost quite being a nurse. HOWEVER, she was an AWESOME nurse and very detailed oriented. I learned A LOT from her. How she treated me was inexcusable but I STILL learned, in the end, how to be a good nurse from her. A lot of my detail orientated, anal retentive routines I use to make sure I do not make a mistake, I learned from her (and I still do them 17 years later). She taught me to always think a few steps ahead of my day. Whenever I have down time to look around and see what is the next thing I can do (rather than just sitting). She taught me how to chart as I go. She taught me to have a strict routine whenever I give meds and know each med before I give it. I can still remember her face and name. I have no idea what happened to her as I left my first job after a year and a half (I did not fit in with the politics). I would love to be able to show her that I AM a good Nurse and NP (she never believed I could do it) and that despite everything, she DID teach me a lot. Awesome nurses do NOT mean awesome teachers/preceptors and can make for a difficult experience for their students/preceptees. You CAN learn from their example though. In an ideal world, everyone would have the ideal experience that Ruby talks about. That is not reality and it is important to realize that even in a less than ideal situation, you CAN still learn.