You are an experienced staff nurse on an inpatient specialty unit. Today, a local nursing school instructor approaches you and asks if you would be willing to become a preceptor for a nursing student as part of his 10-week leadership–management clinical rotation. The instructor relays that there will be no instructor on site and that the student has had only minimal exposure to acute care clinical skills. The student will have to work very closely with you on a one-to-one basis. The school of nursing can offer no pay for this role, but the instructor states that she would be happy to write a thank you letter for your personnel fi le and that she would be available at any time to address questions that might arise. The unit does not reduce workload for preceptors, although credit for service is given on the annual performance review. The unit supervisor states that the choice is yours but warns that you may also be called upon to assist with the orientation of a nurse who will transfer to the unit in 6-weeks’ time. You have mixed feelings about whether to accept this role. Although you enjoy having students on the unit and being in the teaching role, you are unsure if you can do both your normal, heavy workload as well as give the students the time that they will undoubtedly need to learn. You do feel a “need to give back to your profession” and personally believe that nurses need to be more supportive of each other, but you are significantly concerned about role overload. ASSIGNMENT: Decide if you will accept this role. Would you place any constraints upon the instructor, the student, or your supervisor as a condition of accepting the role? What were the strongest driving forces for your decision? What were the greatest restraining forces? What evaluation criteria would you develop to assess whether your final decision was a good one?

 

You are one of the care coordinators for a home health agency. One of your duties is to orient new employees to the agency. Recently, the chief nursing executive hired Brian, an experienced acute care nurse, to be one of your team members. Brian seemed eager and enthusiastic. He confided in you that he was tired of acute care and wanted to be more involved with long-term patient and family caseloads. During Brian’s orientation, you became aware that his clinical skills were excellent, but his therapeutic communication skills were inferior to those of the rest of your staff. You discussed this with Brian and explained how important communication is in gaining the trust of agency patients and that trust is necessary if the needs of the patients and the goals of the agency are to be met. You referred Brian to some literature that you believed might be helpful to him. After a 3-week orientation program, Brian began working unsupervised. It is now 4 weeks later. Recently, you received a complaint from one of the other nurses and one from a patient regarding Brian’s poor communication skills. Brian seems frustrated and has not gained acceptance from the other nurses in your work group. You suspect that some of the nurses resent Brian’s superior clinical skills, whereas others believe that he does not understand his new role, and they are becoming impatient with him. You are genuinely concerned that Brian does not seem to be fitting in. ASSIGNMENT: Could this problem have been prevented? Decide what you should do now. Outline a plan to resocialize Brian into his new role and make him feel like a valued part of the staff.