Breaking Barriers: Addressing Preceptor Challenges in Nurse Practitioner Education for Primary Care Solutions

There is a major shortage of primary care physicians in the U.S., including Massachusetts where one-third of residents report no primary care physician due to lack of availability. Nurse practitioners (NP) can potentially meet this demand, but there is an obstacle with a lack of clinical preceptors, who provide needed on-the-job education for NP students. This presentation explores how to address this issue to potentially equalize the NP system of clinical education with that of medical students. “If we fail to address this formally and enact systems, we will create further inequities and ultimately fail our students and the healthcare system.”