Question: Accepting Additional Responsibility You are an experienced staff nurse on an inpatient specialty unit. Today, a local nursing school instructor approaches you and asks if you would be willing to become a preceptor for a nursing student as part of his 10-week leadership-management clinical rotation. The instructor relays that there will be no instructor on site and that the student has had only minimal exposure to acute care clinical skills. The student will have to work very closely with you on a one-to-one basis. The school of nursing can offer no pay for this role, but the instructor states that she would be happy to write a thank you letter for your personnel fi le and that she would be available at any time to address questions that might arise. The unit does not reduce workload for preceptors, although credit for service is given on the annual performance review. The unit supervisor states that the choice is yours but warns that you may also be called upon to assist with the orientation of a nurse who will transfer to the unit in 6-weeks time. You have mixed feelings about whether to accept this role. Although you enjoy having students on the unit and being in the teaching role, you are unsure if you can do both your normal, heavy workload as well as give the students the time that they will undoubtedly need to learn. You do feel a "need to give back to your profession" and personally believe that nurses need to be more supportive of each other, but you are significantly concerned about role overload.

ASSIGNMENT: Decide if you will accept this role. Would you place any constraints upon the instructor, the student, or your supervisor as a condition of accepting the role? What were the strongest driving forces for your decision? What were the greatest restraining forces? What evaluation criteria would you develop to assess whether your fi nal decision was a good one?