Clinical Teaching Behavior Among Nursing Clinical Preceptors and Its Associated Factors: A Multicenter Cross-Sectional Study
This multicenter cross-sectional study reveals that while nursing clinical preceptors generally demonstrate high clinical teaching behavior scores, their performance is most strongly influenced by tacit knowledge sharing, teaching self-efficacy, and specific professional development factors such as training frequency, extensive experience, regular qualification reviews, and full-time preceptorship roles.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
The quality of nursing care depends heavily on how well new nurses and students learn their craft. While classroom lessons provide the necessary theory, the real skills of judgment, communication, and patient safety are forged in the hospital wards. This is where clinical preceptors come in: experienced nurses who act as mentors, guiding learners through the complex, high-stakes environment of patient care. Their behavior—how they teach, how they offer feedback, and how they support a learner's confidence—directly shapes the next generation of healthcare workers. If a mentor is skilled at turning their own hidden, intuitive knowledge into clear lessons, the student learns faster and feels safer. If the mentor struggles to create a supportive environment, even a talented student may feel lost. Understanding what makes these mentors effective is not just an academic exercise; it is a matter of patient safety and workforce stability.
A recent study involving over 1,200 nursing mentors across four hospitals in China sought to understand exactly what drives effective teaching in these clinical settings. The researchers focused on three main areas: the mentors' confidence in their ability to teach, their willingness to share their own unspoken, experience-based knowledge, and the support they receive from their hospitals. They asked the mentors to rate their own teaching behaviors, their confidence levels, and how often they shared their personal insights with learners. The goal was to find out which factors were most strongly linked to high-quality teaching.
The results painted a clear picture of the current state of nursing mentorship. Overall, the mentors scored quite high on their teaching behaviors, averaging a score of 93.93 out of a possible 115. This suggests that most mentors are doing a good job. They were particularly strong at showing care and support for their students, creating a sense of emotional safety in the ward. However, the study also found a specific area where mentors struggled: creating a learning atmosphere. This dimension, which involves setting up the physical and social environment for learning, scored the lowest. It suggests that while mentors are good at being kind and supportive individuals, they find it harder to organize the ward itself to be a place where learning happens naturally.
The study identified two powerful personal traits that were closely tied to better teaching. The first was teaching self-efficacy, which is simply a mentor's belief in their own ability to teach well. The second, and even more important factor, was tacit knowledge sharing. Tacit knowledge refers to the unwritten, intuitive skills that experienced nurses possess—like knowing how to spot a subtle change in a patient's condition or how to navigate a difficult conversation with a family member. The researchers found that mentors who were better at turning these hidden insights into clear, teachable moments were the ones who scored highest on overall teaching quality. In fact, the ability to share this kind of knowledge was the single strongest predictor of effective teaching in the study.
Beyond personal traits, the study highlighted the critical role of the hospital system. Mentors who participated frequently in teaching training, those who had been mentors for more than ten years, and those who were formally recognized through regular qualification reviews tended to be better teachers. Interestingly, the study also looked at mentors who held administrative titles, such as head nurses. The data suggested that those with heavy administrative burdens sometimes had lower teaching scores, likely because their management duties left them less time for direct, one-on-one teaching with students. This indicates that while experience and training are vital, the structure of a nurse's job also matters; if a mentor is too busy with paperwork or management, their ability to teach suffers.
The researchers used advanced statistical methods to sift through dozens of potential factors, from age and education to job titles and training frequency, to isolate the most important drivers. They confirmed that the link between sharing hidden knowledge and teaching quality was robust, holding true even when they tested the data in different ways. The study concludes that improving nursing education requires a two-pronged approach. First, hospitals need to help mentors learn how to externalize their own experience, teaching them how to articulate the "why" behind their actions so students can learn from them. Second, the system must support these mentors by ensuring they have the time, training, and institutional recognition to focus on teaching, rather than just clinical care or administration. By focusing on these specific areas, hospitals can turn their experienced nurses into even more effective teachers, ultimately leading to better care for patients.
Drowning in papers in your field?
Get daily digests of the most novel papers matching your research keywords — with technical summaries, in your language.