Do You Want to Be a Preceptor?
- Jonathon Jenkins
- 5h
- 6 min read
If you are in the EMS profession, one day it is going to happen: someone in leadership walks up to you and asks, “Hey, do you want to be a preceptor?” On the surface, it feels flattering! Somebody thinks you are good enough at your job, both clinically and interpersonally, to shepherd a student into the profession. But saying “yes” is not like saying yes to a little extra responsibility on the side. It is saying yes to shaping (or destroying) another human being’s career, mindset, and future.
Here is the reality: being a preceptor is not just about your ability to teach. It is about influencing a student’s worldview! It is true that you are going to teach them how to talk to patients and place IVs, but you are also going to teach them, consciously or not, what it means to be an EMS professional. That influence can be profoundly positive or devastatingly negative, so let’s talk about what the role of preceptor actually entails, why it carries so much weight, and how to approach it with the seriousness it deserves. Are you ready?
Thinking Beyond the Call
One of the traps new preceptors often fall into is thinking their job is simply to pass along clinical knowledge. But preceptorship is really about teaching a student think and understand that their decisions do not exist in a vacuum. Every action performed, from the way you interact with the dispatch center, how you transfer care to the emergency department, the tone you use when speaking to your partner, ripples outward. Students are constantly piecing together not only how to manage patients, but also how to operate in the broader ecosystem that is EMS.
Research in medical education consistently highlights the “hidden curriculum,” the unwritten lessons students learn from role models about professionalism, collaboration, and culture (Hafferty, 1998). In EMS, that hidden curriculum is even more amplified. If you shrug off protocols, cut corners, or treat colleagues poorly, your student absorbs those lessons as “the way things are done.” As a preceptor, you are not just teaching medicine, you are teaching systems navigation. That includes modeling how to escalate concerns, how to advocate for patients, and how to collaborate across challenging silos.
Feedback is the Oxygen for Growth
Feedback is [probably] the most important, and most uncomfortable, part of
any preceptorship, regardless of the preceptor’s experience. Too soft, and
your student never learns what to improve, let alone how to improve it. Too
harsh, and you risk damaging confidence and shutting down growth. Educational literature frames effective feedback as specific, prompt, and actionable (Archer, 2010). It is not enough to say, “You need to work on your assessments.” That is like telling a telling a chef to, “be better at cooking.” Instead:
- “When you assessed the chest pain patient, you skipped a neurological exam. Let’s add that in next time.”
- “Nice job identifying that the respiratory distress originated from obstructive lung disease. Keep focusing on those subtle signs.”
The prompt timing of feedback also matters immensely. Feedback given two weeks later does not hit the same as feedback in the moment, while the call is still fresh. Students need feedback loops that are immediate, balanced, and safe.
Most importantly, feedback is not about showing you are smarter. It is about helping someone else get better. That means checking your ego and focusing on the learner’s needs, not your need to be “right.” You might even learn something too!
Modeling Lifelong Learning with Humility
There is a myth that preceptors need to know everything. Spoiler: they do not. And pretending you do is one of the fastest ways to lose your credibility. When you model humility such as, “I don’t know the answer, but let’s look it up together,” you teach your student that medicine is a field of lifelong learning. You normalize uncertainty. You show them that the real mark of professionalism is not encyclopedic recall but rather knowing how to find answers and staying safe in the meantime.
In EMS especially, we have long suffered from the “fake it ‘til you make it” mentality. I even wrote a blog with that title once! But, what “fake it ‘til you make it” really teaches students is that bluffing is acceptable. This is incredibly dangerous! A humble preceptor builds safer clinicians because they set the precedent that asking questions and double checking references is part of competent care. It is not the exception and a skill we only do sometimes, it is part of the routine mental model.
The Hidden Cultural Curriculum
Think back to your own preceptors. What do you remember? In most cases, it is not the precise way they taught you to start an IV; it is how they carried themselves:
-The preceptor who treated every patient, no matter how intoxicated or combative, with dignity.
- The preceptor who grumbled through every shift, teaching you that burnout and cynicism are the norm.
- The preceptor who made you feel like part of the team even when you were fumbling through your first patient report.
Students will mimic what they see more than what they hear. That is the “hidden curriculum.” Culture is transmitted through modeling. If you want your student to grow into a clinician who embodies compassion, professionalism, resilience, and lifelong learning, then you need to live and exemplify those values on every call.
Engineering Cultures of Belonging
One of the most overlooked responsibilities of a preceptor is fostering belonging. Students are in a vulnerable place. They are balancing nerves, performance anxiety, and fear of failure not to mention living a life outside of their role as a student. The way you treat them will influence not just how much they learn, but whether they want to stay in the profession at all. Belonging is a huge predictor of persistence in healthcare education (Whitman & Rose, 2021). When students feel psychologically safe to ask questions and make mistakes, while knowing they are still valued, they learn faster and perform at higher levels with greater consistency. Conversely, if their preceptor humiliates them, dismisses their input, or freezes them out of team interactions, their learning shutters. Engineering a culture of belonging can be done with small gestures:
- Introducing your student to the patient and emergency department as part of your team.
- Checking in after a tough call to see how they are doing emotionally.
- Making it clear that mistakes are expected and are opportunities for growth, not ridicule.
-Taking an interest in their life outside of paramedicine: asking about their family, pets, etc.
These little moments do not just shape the student’s confidence. They set the tone for the kind of clinician and future preceptor that student will one day become.
The Weight of Preceptorship
So, let’s bring it back full circle, shall we? When someone asks, “Do you want to be a preceptor?” What they are really asking is:
- Do you want to shape a future colleague’s worldview?
- Do you want to play a role in whether they thrive or burn out?
- Do you want to plant the seeds of professionalism, compassion, and lifelong learning that will ripple outward into countless patient encounters you will never even see?
Preceptorship is not about free labor or resume padding. It is about stewardship of the profession. The way you handle this responsibility does not just impact one student, it impacts every patient they will care for, every partner they will ride with, and every student they will someday precept themselves. Real people. Real lives. Real consequences. The ripple effect is real, so, when you say “yes,” know that what you are actually saying yes to is building the future of EMS.
References
Archer, J. C. (2010). State of the science in health professional education:
Effective feedback. Medical Education, 44(1), 101–108.
Hafferty, F. W. (1998). Beyond curriculum reform: Confronting medicine’s
hidden curriculum. Academic Medicine, 73(4), 403–407
Kilminster, S. M., & Jolly, B. C. (2000). Effective supervision in clinical
practice settings: A literature review. Medical Education, 34(10), 827–840.
Ramani, S., & Leinster, S. (2008). AMEE Guide no. 34: Teaching in the
clinical environment. Medical Teacher, 30(4), 347–364. https://doi.org/10.1080/01421590802061613
Whitman, N., & Rose, D. (2021). Belongingness in nursing and health
education: A concept analysis. Nurse Education Today, 100, 104864.