A return to precepting.

By Suzanne D. Williams/Unsplash

There is no question that precepting new grad RNs requires a lot of extra thought, time, and energy for bedside nurses also looking to take care of our patients and their family members. But even as an introvert who finds it challenging to talk nearly nonstop for an entire 12-hour shift, I have in the past still enjoyed precepting. I’ve found it deeply rewarding to watch someone under my mentorship grow in skill and confidence as a young nurse.

When the pandemic hit and sent my young children home for distance learning, I took a break from precepting, as my capacity for additional mentoring at work had shrunk significantly.

Now that my children are back on their school campus, I am preparing to precept a new grad who is part of a cohort that went through nursing school during a pandemic with considerable limitations to their clinical experiences. As I dust off my own preceptor hat, I have found myself revisiting what I want to lay out as a foundation for my new preceptee.

Here’s what I’d like to communicate to my new grad, from beginning to end of our preceptor relationship:

    • My top priorities are patient safety, the family’s sense of safety, and your well-being.
      All have equal priority, which means that even if something happens that feels potentially unsafe with the patient, I will still prioritize your mental and emotional well-being in the way I deliver feedback to you. I will not throw you under the bus.
    • My expectations of you are to:
      1. Be kind and patient with yourself. What you are embarking upon is hard, and I don’t expect you to feel as though it should all come easily or naturally to you as a new grad.
      2. Put patient safety first, so if I challenge you to be more independent in a situation and you don’t feel it is safe, tell me I’m pushing too hard and we’ll revise our plan together.
      3. Be honest and open with me about what you need and how you feel throughout your residency.
      4. Be a person of integrity. If you make a mistake or don’t know how to do something, please tell me.
    • My perspective on our relationship in context of this time is:
      1. We both have things we can teach each other. You’ve learned the latest in terms of evidence-based practice and even our unit standards. You bring a fresh perspective that I can learn from.
      2. You’re coming into nursing in a really delicate, challenging time. Our bigger context is already so fraught with difficulty. I’m here to give you a safe place to grow, not throw you to the wolves.
      3. I’ll be foregrounded in the beginning, but my goal is to fade into the background over time and let you, your unique personality and strengths, your skills, and your presence really shine.
      4. I won’t know everything, but I’m here to teach what I do know. As for everything else, we’ll ask smarter people about it or research it together.
    • This time is, I believe, less about your success and more about your growth.
      Certainly we want you to “succeed” by feeling capable of being an independent new nurse when residency is over. But in the upcoming months, you will grow both through great days and rough days. You’ll grow through holding onto confidence and also through wrestling with fear. You’ll grow through moments of joy and moments of despair over your patients. I’ll be your cheerleader through all your growth, and all of that growth will contribute ultimately to your success.

Nursing feels harder than it’s ever felt. I am no absolute bedrock as a preceptor, but I hope it will be my shared humanity with my preceptee that will help us take steps forward individually and together in this work we seek to do well.