Benefits of preceptorship for strengthening nursing students' clinical competence in professional nursing education

Abstract

Background: Preceptor ship is a structured clinical supervision model that facilitates nursing students' transition from academic learning to professional clinical practice. By integrating theoretical knowledge with supervised clinical experience, preceptorship plays a crucial role in developing students' clinical competence and professional readiness.

Objective: To analyze the implementation of preceptorship and explore the contextual factors related to the development of nursing students’ clinical competence during professional education.

Method: This study employed a convergent mixed-methods design, integrating a quantitative descriptive component with a qualitative component. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected simultaneously, analyzed separately, and integrated during interpretation. A total of 51 clinical preceptors participated in the quantitative phase. From this cohort, 12 preceptors who met the predefined inclusion criteria were purposively selected for in-depth interviews in the qualitative phase. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, whereas qualitative data underwent thematic analysis. Findings from both datasets were integrated during the interpretation phase.

Results:The majority of preceptors were female (96%), had a bachelor's degree in nursing (84%), and had attended preceptor training (96%). Most respondents viewed the implementation of preceptorship positively, with 74% rating it excellent and 26% rating it good. Qualitative findings identified themes related to institutional support, preceptor competency, student preparedness, communication and collaboration, learning strategies, barriers to implementation, enabling factors, and preceptor expectations. Challenges included workload constraints, the theory-practice gap, and inconsistencies between academic and clinical practice. 

Conclusion: Preceptorship was perceived positively as a support for clinical learning. Strengthening preceptor development, communication, and institutional collaboration is important to improve preceptorship implementation and students’ clinical competence.