Reflection being a Preceptor at the tertiary Cure Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan
Clinical placement and practicums are considered as an integral part of the nursing curriculum all over the world including Pakistan. Through my experience and exploration of literature, it could be apprehended that in the course of clinical practice, nursing students perform the implementation of theoretical concepts in their allocated placements or site fields, thus, these clinical placements prepare them for their nursing role and responsibility in the community (ref). However, for teaching and facilitating students to achieve the required level of competency in the clinical setting, proper guidance is needed and one way to offer the required support to students is the utilization of a clinical preceptor. Pakistan's health care is experiencing a shortage of nurses, despite the increasing volume of nursing students at teaching and learning hospitals’ of Pakistan. However, this increasing volume of students needs the call for prepared, qualified and trained preceptors’ involvement in clinical placements. Thus, in the bigger picture, the involvement of preceptors will assist to improve the quality of standards of Pakistan’s health care system and will retain newly graduateing nurses.



Literature Review
Clinical Preceptorship
The Clinical Preceptorship is defined as “an individual teaching/ learning method in which each student is assigned to a particular preceptor so the nursing student can experience day to day practice with a role model and resource person immediately available within the clinical setting” (ref). The concept of Clinical Preceptorship has been explored and used in nursing education and nursing service administration since 1960 (Hayes & Harrell, 1994). The Clinical Preceptorship intends to build confidence and strengthen the knowledge and skills through interactive facilitation with preceptors McCusker (2013).

Preceptorship is an educational relationship which opens the doors for the less experienced nursing professionals to experienced nurse practitioners, who are considered as a competent professional role models (ref). The Department of Health (2008) affirms that at the initial stages of a nursing career clinical preceptorship would empower nurses to grow from novices to experts and buoy up strive for progress throughout their practice (ref). Likewise, Hollywood (2011) suggested that it' is essential to support newly qualified registered nurses and to take it into consideration as they are the future of the nursing profession and, therefore, it is our responsibility to invest in the initial phase of their nursing practice (ref).