Preceptors and clinical training

See how clinical rotations impact our students’ perceptions and enhance their skills.

Leading by example and instructing through motivation — preceptors are health care providers who teach, support, coach, evaluate, serve as role models and aid in developing competencies in students working to become future providers. The relationship enables students to experience day-to-day practice with a role model within a clinical setting. It prepares students for a postgraduate profession and exposes preceptors to new ideas and information being taught today.

UC Davis has a long history of integrating clinical preceptorship with classroom education. The Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing is UC Davis seeks to cultivate academic excellence through immersive, interprofessional and interdisciplinary education and research in partnership with the communities it serves. A primary goal of the clinical programs is to improve the availability of culturally relevant primary care to underserved populations and educate clinicians to deliver care as members of health care teams.

Both the family nurse practitioner and physician assistant programs emphasize community-based, primary-care clinical experiences with clinical rotation sites available in rural and urban settings throughout California. Students are not required to provide or solicit clinical sites or preceptors. Students recognize the preceptor partnership offers them a chance to manage cases, collect basic data and improve their interpretation skills with the different cases they experience in a clinical environment.

Precepting, by its very nature, unites procedural knowledge and practical reasoning within a mentoring, educational environment. Potential preceptors, interested in taking part in the education of physician assistants and nurse practitioners, may contact the school directly to obtain a preceptor application or learn more. School of Nursing representatives evaluate and make decisions on the approval of all clinical sites.

Clinical preceptors and rotations are arranged and approved by the school; it is not the responsibility of the applicant or student to locate preceptor training sites or clinical rotations sites. If an applicant or student has a suggestion for a potential preceptor, the site may be evaluated. The student’s request for a specific preceptor may also be taken into consideration with the goal of coordinating training sites with individual student preferences.

Physician assistant students must complete at least 1,360 hours of clinical rotations and nurse practitioner students must complete at least 720 hours. Additionally, students in both programs are required to spend between 180 and 640 hours (depending on program) in a primary-care rotation.

Are you interested in being a clinical preceptor? Complete this form to receive more information