A Reflection of Five Weeks of the Co-operative Nursing Experience
Rebecca Tutt, RN
University of Texas at Arlington

In partial fulfillment of the requirements of
N3300 Specialized Topics in Nursing (Co-Op)

Beth Mancini, RN, Ph.D.
March 7, 2013
Online RN to BSN
Introduction
The co-operative nursing assignment has given me the opportunity to use my critical thinking, decision-making, leadership, and clinical nursing expertise learned throughout the RN-BSN program. “The fostering of critical thinking as one of the terminal learning goals of nursing education based on the idea that critical thinking is important not only in the nursing workplace, but also in nursing education” (Shin, Jung, Shin & Kim, 2006, p. 233). My …show more content…

I also used nursing journals for reference and research of nursing preceptorship programs.
“The importance of nurse preceptors in helping to educate new nurses cannot be overemphasized as they mentor new nurses and help them to visualize the range of roles they will perform in a variety of clinical settings” (Paterniti, 2006). The preceptorship program was a large task to tackle. I started by meeting with LaBecca Doyle, RN, BSN, MA, clinical nurse educator. She was insightful and gave me tips on how to research preceptor programs. At that point, I started researching program styles and looked to see if any of the clinics in our building had a program that could be modified to fit my clinic. I then began looking at the current staff to see who had the right skill set to be a preceptor in the ambulatory setting.
After selecting three nurses, one from each POD, I set up a meeting to collaborate on this project. I brought all of the articles and outlines regarding preceptor programs to the table. The collaboration with the nursing staff was contributory to achieving the goal of implementing a preceptorship program within our clinic. We all agreed on making a binder with an outline of the program, which would include the description of the preceptor’s role, position relations, role responsibilities, an orientation agreement between the preceptor and the orientee, an agreement between the preceptor and the nursing supervisor, and