To precept or not to precept: Perspectives from nurse practitioners

Nurse practitioner (NP) preceptors are crucial to clinical education. Recent increases in the required direct patient care hours for NP students may worsen the current preceptor shortage. However, most studies of preceptorship only include NPs who are current preceptors and are therefore missing vital information from nonpreceptors. It is imperative to understand facilitators and barriers to preceptorship from the perspective of NPs who have stopped being or have never been preceptors.

The purpose of this study was to understand the factors influencing NPs' decisions whether to precept.

This was a descriptive, phenomenological study. Semistructured interviews were recorded in Zoom, transcribed verbatim, deidentified, and analyzed using thematic analysis.

Sixty NPs participated in the study: 23 current preceptors, 22 previous preceptors, and 15 who had never been preceptors. Facilitators to preceptorship included institutional support of preceptorship, positive student characteristics, clear expectations from the educational facility, and incentives. Barriers to preceptorship included time constraints, specialty, negative student characteristics, no institutional support, and being uncomfortable in the clinical role.

Preceptors and nonpreceptors shared similar themes-positive student characteristics and clear expectations as facilitators to preceptorship, and time as a barrier. However, other themes were unique to one preceptorship group. This provides new evidence for practice and research.

Nurse practitioner programs can facilitate preceptorship by ensuring that students are well prepared and providing clear expectations. Strategies should be developed to manage the time burden of preceptorship. In addition, support for preceptorship by health care organizations and systems should be studied.