Background: Preceptors are a key to retaining new graduate nurses in a hospital setting. Thus, it is important to understand new staff teaching experiences from their own perspectives. Preceptor experience is an inadequately explored topic in Taiwan.
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore preceptor experiences related to their training of new graduate nurses in a hospital setting in Taiwan.
Methods: For this interpretive phenomenological study, researchers purposively recruited 15 nurse preceptors from a medical center in central Taiwan. Study data were collected by means of semistructured, in-depth interviews. Tape recordings were transcribed verbatim, and transcripts were analyzed using a hermeneutic circle approach.
Results: Three general themes captured the new nurse training experiences of the preceptors: (a) applying a variety of teaching strategies, (b) feeling the burden of being a preceptor, and (c) developing a sense of achievement.
Conclusions/implications for practice: Being in the role of both a preceptor and nurse was perceived as a challenge by participants because of heavy workloads and fears of failure. Thus, reducing the preceptor's patient care responsibilities while educating new nurses should be a priority. This study also found cultivating a positive work climate as crucial to support preceptors and new nurses so that preceptors do not feel alienated or overly stressed. A workshop is a useful strategy to introduce preceptors and new nurses to standardized training procedures and documents; this, in turn, can provide a more holistic approach to teaching and learning and reduce pressures on preceptors caused by additional, unfamiliar paperwork.