featured – The Preceptorship Support Platform

The National Council of State Boards of Nursing’s study of the transition of new graduate nurses confirmed what many hospitals already knew: There is a disconnect between education and real life experience in a hospital.

The Problem	The Impact
New nurses care for sicker patients in increasingly complex health settings.	New nurses report more negative safety practices and errors than experienced nurses.
New nurses feel increased stress levels.	Stress is a risk factor for patient safety and practice errors.
Approximately 25% of new nurses leave a position within their first year of practice.	Increased turnover negatively influences patient safety and health care outcomes.

From the National Council of State Boards of Nursing

The NCSBN concluded that, “There is a need for best practices of training new nurses that can be replicated across the country to ensure consistent quality of care, and drop the alarming turnover rates of new nurses”. They also provided TTP training courses that both new graduate nurses and preceptors can take:

How can a Transition to Practice model be integrated into your nursing orientation training?

As we know, new hire nurses can get overwhelmed by trying to learn everything about their new hospital, caring for patients, and dealing with possible reality shock. Pairing novice nurses with preceptors who can help guide them through their orientation helps combat this, but implementing a system that supports preceptors as well as preceptees can benefit your program immensely.

While nursing boards require certain documentation to be compliant, your preceptorship program should include all of the following to support new hire orientation:

Convenient skills tracking. Both preceptees and preceptors should have an easy way to track their training so there are no gaps in competency.
Weekly meetings. Preceptees should be meeting with their preceptors regularly, and tracking and recording weekly meetings will give preceptees important feedback, and allows preceptors to clearly communicate goals and expectations.
An emphasis on well-being. New nurses are encouraged to keep a journal to that they can reflect on their learning and remain aware of their mental state. Incorporating self-reflection into your orientation process will emphasis this vital element of transitioning to practice.

The Preceptorship Support Platform is an online tool built to support nursing orientation programs by providing a paperless solution for documentation and process management. Each feature of the program has a specific purpose, and the platform was built in collaboration with nurses to incorporate best practices (like those laid out in this article from American Nurse Today) because we wanted to make nurses’ lives easier.

What are the features?

Checklists

Hospitals can add their custom clinical and policy checklists to the platform so new hires and their preceptors can keep track of their progress online. Because this tool is completely customizable, hospitals can add documents, images, or links to other sources in their unit and hospital-wide checklists.

Patient Log

Like with the checklist feature, orientees can record their patient experiences to be approved by their preceptors online. This section also includes a visual tool that allows both orientees and preceptors to see what diagnoses and skills preceptees have had a chance to observe or assist with.

With this tool, preceptees can see what they need experience with and precepetors and coordinators can make sure that new hires are on track with their orientation.

Meetings

While preceptors and preceptees should be meeting regularly to set goals and give feedback, we know how difficult this can be to arrange and keep up with. Having structured meeting templates with built-in goal setting and feedback can help nurses find time to have these essential meetings and make sure that they are effective. Hospitals can customize the structure and frequency of these meetings to fit their program.

Journal

Self-care is an important, but often overlooked, piece of a successful preceptorship. Keeping a journal is one way that new nurses can reflect on what they have learned, the challenges they’ve faced, and the successes they’ve had. Including journaling in a program that helps to manage the rest of their orientation will encourage them to engage in reflective learning activities in addition to their regular clinical training.

Well-being Tracker

As a part of the journal feature, preceptees are asked a series of questions meant to assess their overall well-being. Preceptees can see how their answers vary over time so they will know when to ask for help, and preceptors and managers can see an overall well-being score so they can intervene if someone is struggling.

Shared Notes

Because some new hires have multiple preceptees, coordinators, and managers involved in their orientations, the shared notes section is available to make it easier for everyone to stay in the loop. The ability to access these notes, checklists, and other documentation is one of the main benefits of transitioning to an online program that saves time and paper.

Overall…

New hires are responsible for driving their progress. They can work through the checklists at their own pace, and they are responsible for submitting completed lists and patient logs to their preceptors.
There is built in feedback for preceptees. Studies show that consistent feedback is necessary for new nurses to succeed, so the platform is built so preceptors have the opportunity to submit feedback as preceptees work through their checklists and log patient experiences, in addition to discussing performance during meetings.
All of the documentation, including preceptors signing off on each skill or checklist, is automatically recorded, so orientation coordinators can easy compile reports.

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A better nursing orientation: Transition to practice