Prompted to enter the virtual patient’s room and assess her status, a visitor rolls the cursor over a clipboard, which offers a history. Rolling over a drip bag brings info on meds. More hints come from various machines and even the patient. The clues are all put together, and perhaps one more clinical preceptor is made.
That’s the thinking behind Core Concepts for Clinical Preceptors & Faculty. It’s a new online course from the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing designed to ease a shortage in clinical preceptors and faculty—so integral to the success of future nurses—that has left schools of nursing and medical institutions scrambling.
Core Concepts is the fruit of a two-year effort led by Sarah (Jodi) Shaefer, PhD, RN, and Pamela R. Jeffries, PhD, RN, FAAN, who worked with clinical and educational concept experts and web designers to create an interface that allows users to advance at their own pace, move back and forth within the program, receive instant feedback on their progress, and even repeat steps as desired. The interactivity is astonishing.
The course, free to all Maryland nurses, “is a student-centered program that is very inviting,” explains Shaefer, “and it encourages active participation.” Candidates for the course would logically include those who are doing the job of preceptor without the title—providing orientations on a unit, perhaps—and those who have hesitated at filling these clinical roles for lack of confidence in their teaching skills. Core Concepts for Clinical Preceptors & Faculty also offers free continuing nursing education (CNE) hours. The course will also be available to non-Maryland nurses, with pricing to be determined.