Competency-Based Nurse Practitioner Education: An Overview for the Preceptor

Psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner student preceptorship: Perspectives on the clinical training

“…Additionally, Elisabeth et al (2009) [16] and Trede et al (2016) [9] highlighted the importance of preceptors' pedagogical and epistemological competence in order to facilitate best practice clinical scholarship. Lucas & Bischof (2014), [7] Schumacher & Risco (2017), [17] and Weber et al (2016) [18] noted that preceptors who lack pedagogical abilities on accessing and utilizing evidence-based knowledge may have difficulty engaging and/or inspiring students during the preceptorship relationship-building process. Intrinsically, PMHNP preceptors' characteristics include: The commitment to give back as well as the enthusiasm to take on the demanding and timeconsuming challenges and responsibilities in order to share their expertise with students.…”

“…Some examples include: (1) clarifying role socialization within contexts of professional development, (2) easing social discomfort and clinical practice uncertainties, (3) building collaborative stakeholder connectedness and relationships, (4) increasing emotional intelligence, and (5) building research, practice and leadership capacities. [1,5,13,15,17] Phenomenologically, the process of PMHNP students' role socialization can present interpersonal and professional challenges within the clinical environment. For instance, clinical situations or presentations that may be characteristically and contextually understandable to the experienced PMHNP preceptor could be personally or even professionally uncomfortable or challenging to the novice/naive student.…”

“…Additionally, the PMHNP preceptor incorporates principles of andragogy, uses case examples and role playing as experiential teaching and learning tools while providing students with constructively corrective feedback. [5,17] Intrinsically, the literature supports PMHNP student clinical-practice socialization within the context of the preceptor relationship. This is a paradigm designed to stimulate professional development while facilitating role transitional methods from novice to expert practitioners.…”

“…[4,18] This is achieved by merging some essential practice elements with new evidenced-based knowledge, skills and competencies to create a more consolidative, knowledgeable, pragmatic, patient/family-centered group of PMH-NPs. [4,17,18] These practitioners would be competent in conducting comprehensively integrated psycho-neurobiological, psychological and psychosocial assessments, formulate supporting diagnoses, and providing best-practice pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions across the lifespan. [4,18] They would also be skilled interdisciplinary and interprofessional collaborators.…”

“…Therefore, PMHNP students' educational theory and practice accomplishments are through the careful merging and balancing of their emotional and cognitive processes, as well as understanding the wide-ranged scientific principles guided by the preceptor's knowledge and support aimed at achieving clinical and practice mastery. [17] The preceptor supports the educational paradigm by creating a positive teaching and learning experiences through strong connect-edness along with being authentic, intentionally reflective and compassionate during students' engagements. These processes facilitate students' development of self-knowledge, critical and reflective thinking, and positive engagement that is consistently being modeled and evaluated by the preceptor.…”