Recognizing And Rewarding Nurse Preceptors in Critical Care: Some Answers

In an Editorial¹ published last year, I shared an observation related to the growing difficulty that nurses and human resource staff are experiencing in securing preceptors for new employees. These discussions frequently bemoan that amidst another nursing staff shortage, it has become increasingly difficult to find nursing staff willing to serve as preceptors. In the eternal quest to determine “What gives?,” these exchanges typically end with nurse preceptors, educators, managers, clinical specialists, administrators, and others posing the following 2 questions:

In the April 2002 Editorial, we published a single-page questionnaire to solicit information related to these inquiries. This Editorial presents a summary of your replies to the questions regarding whether and how critical care nurse preceptors are recognized and/or rewarded. Please keep in mind that the methodology used to obtain this information was via a simple, unscientific survey and that only a small sample (n=80) of completed surveys were...