Coaching Programme for Preceptorship of Undergraduate Nurses' Students

Background: During the curricular practices of the Bachelor's Degree in Nursing, students are prepared to carry out an adequate transition process to the professional role. The success of this preparation depends, to a large extent, on preceptorship. In this sense, it is important that practice tutors are motivated and feel competent to teach in the clinical setting. Despite this, no studies have been found that implement and evaluate an intervention to improve nurses' perceptions of preceptorship of undergraduate nursing students.

Purpose: To evaluate the preliminary efficacy of a coaching programme to improve nurses' perceptions of preceptorship of undergraduate nursing students. Specifically, the aim is to determine the impact of the programme on nurses' perceived involvement, motivation, satisfaction, barriers and commitment to clinical mentoring.

Method: An exploratory pre-post quasi-experimental pilot study. Fifteen nurses, the total population of nurses working in the medical-surgical ward, with at least 1 year of experience in the preceptorship of students, will be recruited in June 2022. All the nurses will receive an intervention based on coaching. The strategies of this program consisted of five 6-hour sessions using case studies and role-playing simulations to work on their motivation to develop their teaching role in the preceptorship of undergraduate nursing students and debriefing and a 4-hour booster session seven months later. The IMSOC (involvement, motivation, satisfaction, obstacles and commitment) instrument was used to assess outcomes. The primary outcome was the difference in the median of nurses' involvement, motivation, satisfaction, barriers and commitment in preceptorship students pre and post-intervention (between T0-T1 and T0-T2). Changes within nurses were analyzed using the Wilcoxon test for related samples.

Data collection:

Data collection was divided into three times: T0, T1 and T2. T0 corresponds to preintervention data and T1 and T2 to post-intervention data (T1 after the training and T2 after the whole intervention implementation).

IMSOC (Involvement, Motivation, Satisfaction, Obstacles and Commitment) questionnaire. This questionnaire measures the involvement, motivation, satisfaction, obstacles and commitment of nurses in tutoring students. It is a validated instrument that shows adequate psychometric properties (overall Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) of 0.852 and internal consistency - Cronbach's α of 0.837). It consists of 33 items measured on a 5-point Likert scale (1=strongly disagree - 5=strongly agree).

Ethical considerations:

This study conformed to the principles set out in the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the centre's board and by the Research Ethics Committee (code 2022.044). Data custody complied with Organic Law 3/2018 on data protection (LOPDE). Informed consents were given to all participants. They were informed verbally and in writing about their free participation, the confidentiality of the data and its use for scientific purposes.

Eligibility Criteria:
* Inclusion Criteria:

  * Nurses working in the medical-surgical ward.
  * Nurses with at least one year's experience in the preceptorship of students.
  * Nurses who have voluntarily agreed to participate in the study.
* Exclusion Criteria:

  * Nurses who are not working during the time of the study (sick leave or maternity leave).