Implementing an Evidence-Based Practice Opinion as a Statewide Practice Standard to Guide Nursing Preceptorships

The use of preceptorships for nursing students and newly graduated nurses has become an accepted standard of practice in nursing today (Edwards, Hawker, Carrier, & Rees, 2015). Preceptorships facilitate a nurse’s transition to practice because this experience aids in providing opportunities to practice all types of skills, such as psychomotor, communication, time management, and organizational skills. Other benefits of a preceptorship experience include providing real life patient care experiences and workloads, doing the work rather than observing other nurses, and experiencing supportive nursing relationships (Ulrich, 2012). The topic impacts all of nursing because of the increased use of staff nurse preceptors participating in the education of nursing students and new nurses (Lewallen, DeBrew, & Stump, 2014). This phenomenon impacts not only the staff nurse preceptor, but health care agencies, schools of nursing, nursing faculty, and student nurses. Yet with all of these stakeholders involved in the preceptorship process, not one particular stakeholder owns the entire process. Because of this an evidence based practice guidelines is necessary for this process. Since Boards of Nursing exist to protect the public's health and welfare by overseeing and ensuring safe nursing practice, it is logical that the state board of nursing provide guidance on this topic (Meyer, Moran, Cuvar, & Carlson, 2014; Val Palumbo, Rambur, & Boyer, 2012). The recently revised and updated evidence based Advisory Opinion for a State Board of Nursing was developed based on a systemic review of all 50 state boards of nursing, nursing education accreditation agencies, and current literature. Prior to approval by the State Board of Nursing, the policy Delpi method (Shariff, 2015) was used to solicit feedback from nurse experts in the state from health care agencies and schools of nursing and gain expect consensus prior to the final passage of the Advisory Opinion titled “Preceptorships of Professional Nursing Students”. The resultant Advisory Opinion, completed during a DNP learner capstone project, is current for contemporary nursing practice and addresses delineation of responsibilities of all stakeholders involved in the preceptorship experience.