A collaborative critical care preceptorship for APRN students

Advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) increasingly are caring for critically ill patients as a part of interprofessional teams, but new APRNs may have limited critical care exposure in their training. We created a 12-week critical care preceptorship for APRN students as well as a curriculum composed of daily case-based teaching. Student assessment methods included direct observation, pretests and posttests of critical care knowledge, and presurveys and postsurveys of perceptions about critical care skills. The average score on the knowledge pretest was 50% and increased to 74% on the posttest (N = 10). Students reported increased comfort in several aspects of managing critically ill patients after the preceptorship. Descriptive feedback noted that the preceptorship is distinctive, comprehensive, and focused on student education. The evolving intensive care unit will have increasing numbers of APRNs, and a collaborative preceptorship can improve critical care know-ledge and perceptions of critical care skills in APRN students.