Report For Preceptorship Implementation Of Enrolled Nurse Working

The aim of the preceptorship program

Describe about the Report for Preceptorship Implementation of Enrolled Nurse Working.

You are a senior Enrolled Nurse working on an Acute Medical ward at an acute hospital. You are a dedicated, passionate and caring nurse and who have been working as an Enrolled Nurse for 10 years. You have been working in your current position for about 6 years and as such you have a good working relationship with your Nurse Unit Manager and get on well with most the staff members on the ward.

Today you have been asked to meet with your Nurse Unit Manager and he/she had informed you of the hospital new policy to implement pre-registration preceptorship program (for both EN and RN students) in your hospital within a year time frame. Your ward had been chosen as pilot ward for this new roll out of pre-registration preceptorship program.

As you are a passionate, flexible and engaging senior EN who had received great feedback from past nursing students on your ward, the NUM had allocated you as the project lead to launch the preceptorship program. As usual you will have the continuous support from your NUM as needed; as well you will have the support of Clinical Nurse Educators from the hospital.  

You are very excited about this great opportunity to lead a team and contribute positively to nursing, thus you have organised your first meeting to discuss the preceptorship launch with the rest of the nursing staff members on your ward.

Traditionally the Clinical Nurse Educators from the hospital would look after the students and they would undertake the students’ assessments and teaching.

With the implementation of the preceptorship program, every student both RN and EN undertaking clinical placement on your ward will be allocated to work with one or two of the preceptor/buddy nurses for the entire placement of the clinical placement.

The preceptors (RN or EN) will then be required to undertake the students learning requirements and their clinical assessments to teach and help support the students on their journey to becoming competent dedicated Enrolled or Registered Nurses.

Your observations during the first meeting;

Staff members consist of NUM, Registered Nurses, Enrolled nurses and Health care assistants.

Some of your observations from the initial meeting are as followed;

Some of the staff members are excited to hear about the program & are eager to help

Some are quiet and don’t say much

Observations during the first meeting

Some of the staff members are uneasy about this launch of the preceptorship program

Thinking about some of the essential concepts of team building, leadership skills, developing team cohesion, encouraging innovative ideas and facilitating team work and operational aspect such as liaising with your manager and following your hospital policies and procedures. 

Plan to achieve team outcomes

As a team leader for the launch of preceptorship program on your ward please discuss your plans/ideas to achieve your objective of implementing the preceptorship program on your ward. (S or NYS)

Salas et. al. (1992) defines a team as set of two or more people who come together to interact, adapt and work interdependently towards achieving a common goal. During the formation of a team, members are usually confused and are unclear about the tasks to be accomplished by the team. I would therefore take charge and clearly establish the team’s policies and goals. The purpose of establishing policies and goals would be to eliminate confusion and help team members to clearly understand the main aim of forming the team. I would then identify the strengths and weaknesses of each team member then thereafter outline the specific roles and duties of each team member based on their strengths and weaknesses. Setting specific performance requirements for each team member will ensure that the individual team members clearly understand what is required from each of them and will therefore ensure they work efficiently to meet their individual targets. I would then monitor and assess how the individual team members perform in team projects in the ward and note down the issues that affect effective team work. If the issues affect the whole team, I would organize meetings where the team discusses positive recommendations to resolve them. If it is an individual issue, then I would handle it privately to avoid demoralizing team members in front of their colleagues (Costa et. al. 2014)   

How would you ensure that all staff members on the ward participate and contribute positively to the implementation of the preceptorship program? (S or NYS)

The success of the preceptorship program depends on all nurses offering positive contributions to the team. I would therefore encourage the nurses to identify with the preceptorship program at a personal level. I would achieve this by letting the nurses know that they act as role models to the students who are attached to them. Communicating openly and honestly with the team members enables them to understand as much as I do about the project and also motivates team members to have a sense of ownership in the project. I would also include the team members in the planning and decision making process. This will ensure that every team member has a sense of being a leader in the group rather that looking up to me as the leader to come up with all decisions. With everybody feeling like a leader, they will be more motivated to succeed. To facilitate team work, I would encourage the ENs and the RNs to assist each other in the ward when they encounter difficulties while undertaking their specific roles and duties. To further facilitate cohesion and team work, I would encourage team members to constantly communicate with each other and share ideas about issues, concerns and problems that they may face in the ward (Henderson & Eaton 2013; Trede & Bernoth 2016).

Plan to achieve team outcomes

As a leader how would you ensure that the staff members who are proactive about the program to stay interested? (S or NYS)

Proactive members are usually self-directed and are willing to take full responsibility for the decisions and actions they make within the work environment. The proactive team members will do even better when they feel that the team leaders have complete trust in the decisions that they make. Therefore, rather than enforcing my management decisions on these team members, I would perform minimum supervision and let these members come up with their own solutions to the problems they may face. I would accept the fact that nobody is perfect and that mistakes are bound to happen when the team members are left to make decisions on their own. As a team leader, recognising a team member’s efforts even when they fail will help encourage the members to keep trying since they will know there will be no repercussions even when they make wrong decisions. I would also constantly compliment and provide positive feedback to these team members. The complements and feedback are important because they act as a source of encouragement for these team members. This further ensures that these members stay motivated and continue having a positive outlook on the preceptorship program. When proactive members demonstrate great initiatives in the ward, offering rewards is a great way to provide recognition. Rewards may be in the form of free lunch with the NUM or other senior hospital executives. The rewards will also serve as a source of motivation to other team members who may be apprehensive about the program.

How would you ensure engagement and positive contribution from the staff members who may be hesitant and apprehensive about the introduction of preceptorship program? (S or NYS)

These are the undecided team members. They still do not have an opinion on whether the program will eventually be beneficial to the students or not. I would therefore spend time with these team members and try to understand their perspective concerning teamwork in the preceptorship program. According to Sravani (2016), confidence matters greatly when you are trying to convince team members to embrace team work. Therefore, confidently and patiently explaining the goal/goals of our team to the hesitant team members ensures that they at least have a brief overview of the program from my own perspective while still fully believing in me and the decisions I make. According to Liden et. al. (2014), briefly outlining the eventual benefits of a team to the team members helps in convincing more members to come on board and support the goal/goals of a team. I would therefore outline the benefits that the students are set to gain when they are placed under our team’s preceptorship program. I would also answer the questions that these members may have regarding how the team will work to ensure a successful preceptorship program. Additionally, some team members may be hesitant to join the team because of previous bad experiences in the teams they participated in previously. Encouraging and assuring hesitant team members that this team is different from other teams they have indulged in previously ensures that these team members start to participate positively towards the team’s goals.

Lead team to develop cohesion

As a leader how would you ensure positivity and engagement from the team members who are vocal in their hesitation and feels negatively about the program? (S or NYS)

Though negative team members will eventually drive down the overall performance of the whole team, a good team leader knows that every team member has a right to voice their ideas and opinions. The team leader is also not easily discouraged when some team members appear to reject him and his decisions (Schimmel and Jacobs 2014). The team leader should therefore be flexible and have the ability to accommodate every team member’s needs. This eventually promotes trust among team members and also helps convince hesitant team members to join the team. To ensure positivity and engagement, I would stay calm and spend time with these members and listen to the various reasons which make them feel that the team will not effectively handle the program. I would then seek their opinion about what should be changed so that we can come up with a better strategy in handling the program as a team. After this, I would incorporate their opinions in the team’s strategic plan so that these team members will also feel included in the preceptorship program (Liden et. al. 2014). When some of these team members decide to join the rest of the team, I would privately and publicly acknowledge their input to reinforce their positive engagement. Publicly acknowledging them motivates the rest of the vocal team members to try and work with the rest of the team.

How can you as a team leader personally contribute to bringing about team cohesion and promoting preceptorship on the ward? (S or NYS)

To promote cohesion among team members, all team members must understand the team’s goals and objectives. I would ensure I provide a clear path that all team members should follow for the team to achieve its goals. I would also monitor how the team members work together in the ward and this would help me pinpoint and address the issues that hinder effective teamwork. I would also communicate constantly with the team members and also encourage them to communicate with each other regularly. Consistent communication will help team members establish a friendly environment where they can freely share ideas about issues they encounter in the ward. Teams cannot be perfect and they are bound to experience conflicts now and then. As a good team leader, I would always be available to resolve conflicts that may arise between team members. By settling these conflicts personally, I would ensure the overall goal of the team is not affected. I would also then take part in the preceptorship program by personally guiding students through activities in the ward hence acting as a role model to the other team members. Finally, I would encourage the team members to give feedback concerning the overall functioning of the team. I would then use this feedback to accurately modify the team and keep team members functioning well.

Ensuring proactive staff members remain interested

Please discuss strategies that you would use to ensure that you keep your NUM and hospital executive management up to date on the progress of the preceptorship implementation. (S or NYS)

A good communication strategy should ensure a constant and effective exchange of information between the sender and the receiver. Where messages are urgent and feedback is required quickly, I would use phone calls to communicate with the NUM and the hospital’s management. I would then follow-up the phone calls with emails to ensure that the NUM and hospital management at least have a written reference point about the current progress of the program. I would also prepare bimonthly or monthly reports which I would send to the NUM and to the members of the executive management of the hospital. The reports would detail the activities that have been previously carried out by the team and the activities that are currently being carried out by the team members. Reports would also include a list of the problems that the program is currently facing and how we, as a team, are handling them. Where frequent clarification is required, I would schedule weekly and monthly meetings where I, as the team leader, would meet with the NUM and the executive management to discuss the progress of the preceptorship program. (Grunig 2013).

How would you lead this project to ensure that the staff members are kept up to date with potential requirements and changes to the preceptorship program from your NUM or the hospital executive management team? (S or NYS)

To ensure staff members are up to date with potential changes, effective communication must be established between the hospital management team and the team members. Failure to communicate potential changes leads to uncertainty and indecisiveness within the team. I would use phone calls to communicate urgent messages sent from the NUM or the executive management team to the team members. The phone calls would be used to pass basic information regarding potential changes in the preceptorship program and to receive feedback quickly from the team members. Where every team member’s opinion needs to be heard, I would also schedule meetings which the NUM or some members of the hospital executive management may attend and talk directly to the team members. Meetings ensure that the specific message concerning potential changes is heard by everybody and that team members are given an opportunity to voice their concerns about the same. If changes or requirements affect a single team member, then I would arrange for a one-on-one meeting where I can discuss these potential changes in a less formal setting. Emails provide a quick way to send written messages to a number of people. I would send emails to the team members if the message to be passed is short and concise. I would also use memos when I want to send short messages that require the immediate action of the team members (Grunig 2013).

Part 2: Reflective Practice & Feedback

“The use of reflection by nurses begins with the recognition and appreciation of the individual’s experience and the belief that people learn from personal experiences”, (Crisp., Taylor & others., 2014, pg. 542.)

Self-reflection on own performance

References

Costa, P., Passos, A. and Bakker, A. (2014). Teamwork Engagement: A model of Emergence. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, [online] Volume 87(2), pp. 414-436. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Arnold_Bakker /publication/260280956_Team_work_engagement_A_model_of_emergence/links/54f9afd50cf21ee4fdedeec1.pdf [Accessed 21 Aug. 2016].

Grunig, J.E. (2013). Excellence in Public Relations and Communication Management. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, pp. 285-326.

Henderson, A. and Eaton, E. (2013). Assisting nurses to facilitate student and new graduate learning in practice settings: What ‘support’ do nurses at the bedside need? Nurse Education in Practice, 13(3), pp. 197-201.

Liden, R., Wayne, S., Liao, C. and Meuser, D. (2013). Servant Leadership and Serving Culture: Influence on Individual and Unit Performance. Academy of Management, 57(5), pp. 1434-1452.

Salas, E., Dickinson, T., Converse, A. and Tennenbaum, S. (1992). Towards an Understanding of Team Performance and Training. Teams: Their Training and Performance, Norwood: Ablex, pp. 2-29.

Shinners, J., Mallory, C. and Franqueiro, T. (2013). Preceptorship Today: Moving Toward Excellence. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 44(11), pp. 482-483.

Sravani, K. (2015). How to Convince People to Join your Startup. Wisestep, Available at: https://content.wisestep.com/how-to-convince-people-to-join-you-startup-best-tips/ [Accessed 21 Aug. 2016]

Trede, F., Sutton, K. and Bernoth, M. (2016). Conceptualisations and perceptions of the nurse preceptor's role: A scoping review. Nurse Education Today, [online] Volume 36, pp. 268-274. Available at: https://www.nurseeducationtoday.com/article/S0260-6917%2815%2900302-0/pdf [Accessed 21 Aug. 2016]