Nursing Leadership: Role of Nurse Preceptor in Clinical Education

Running head: NURSING LEADERSHIP
Nursing leadership
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

1NURSING LEADERSHIP
The nurse preceptor plays a unique role in clinical education of nursing students and
supporting student nurse to transition from graduate nurse to a professional nurse (Bott, Mohide
& Lawlor, 2011). This paper provides a discussion on personal learning style as a preceptor and
clarified regarding the difference between direction and delegation as a preceptor. It also
discusses about personal strategies to provide feedback to preceptee.
My personal learning style is that of a reflector as I have the tendency to think before
implementing any activity. I neither act not comment on any issues unless I assimilate the
information nor critically reflect on the issue. I have learnt a lot in my professional career by
reflecting on past activities and identify strength and weakness of my action. This approach has
helped to take the right step towards continuous professional development. The learning style of
reflector influences my teaching process as a receptor too. I have encouraged my preceptees to
develop knowledge through the process of reflection of an experience. I have incorporated
David’s Kolb’s inferential learning style in my clinical teaching encounter to help nursing
students take a stand on the topic, probe for supporting evidence, teach clinical rules to them,
reinforce positive behavior and correct their misinterpretations related to any activity (Bott,
Mohide & Lawlor, 2011). Reflection is one of the aspects of precepting in clinical nursing
education and Broadbent et al. (2014) suggest that preceptors should encourage preceptee’s to
reflect on past experience to deflect negative influence and emphasize positive influences.
The role of nurse preceptor is to delegate clinical activities of nurse and direct them
towards the right action. There is difference in the two roles performed by preceptors. The main
goal of delegating is to assign a clinical activity to a nurse and the preceptors are accountable for
their decision to delegate work. One responsibility for nurse preceptor during delegating is to
ensure that the individual nurse is capable of undertaking the clinical activity without any direct