Nurse practitioner preceptors' perceived facilitators and barriers to precepting

Preceptors are an integral part of nurse practitioner (NP) education; they mentor students and facilitate experiential learning in the clinical setting. Understanding factors that motivate clinicians to serve as preceptors can inform recruitment and retention of preceptors.

To understand factors that motivate and challenge clinicians to choose to precept NP students.

A survey was emailed to preceptors of NP students asking them to rate the importance of factors on a scale from not at all important (1) to extremely important (5) in influencing their decision to precept. Factors were categorized into five domains: university process, finance/time/productivity, recognition, certification/education, and intrinsic/other. Descriptive statistics were calculated.

Seventy-three of 224 preceptors responded (33% response rate). Highly rated motivating factors included having the role of preceptor clearly defined (mean = 4.00, SD = 1.01), coworkers support (mean = 4.07, SD = 0.91), and enjoying precepting NP students (Mean = 4.32, SD = 0.72). Lowest rated motivating factors include faculty presence during site visit (Mean = 2.74, SD = 1.11), financial renumeration (M = 2.13, SD = 1.38), and receiving gifts (mean = 1.66, SD = 0.98).

Our findings indicate having coworkers who are supportive of their role as a preceptor, and clearly defined roles are more important than financial renumeration and faculty site visits.

Building relationships with staff, administrators, and preceptors could strengthen academic-clinical partnerships resulting in an environment supportive of precepting NP students. Faculty may be able to reduce travel to clinic sites by communicating more frequently through email or telephone.