Today's preceptors face a wide range of challenges – from new technologies to shifting workforce expectations – and the hardest part is finding the time to manage them all. Presenters at the Precepting Gems session at ASHP Pharmacy Futures 2026 plan to offer practical ways to ease that pressure.
“I think the thing that tends to weigh preceptors down is time,” said program moderator Michael D. Wolcott, assistant dean for student affairs and associate professor at University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. “But there are things that can make your job easier. We’re trying to show you techniques that yes, might be a little bit of a struggle at the beginning, but in the long run will save you time and effort.”
Wolcott spoke with the ASHP News Center about what he hears in the precepting community and how his co-presenters hope to help. What follows is an edited transcript.
Are today’s preceptors at an unprecedented juncture?
We've got a really intensive socio-political climate. We're in the midst of a war. I've got team members who are like, “It costs me $20 to drive into work every day.” All these things are kind of culminating in how people show up in this space.
The other piece is around the integration of artificial intelligence. We're seeing a generation that is in general resistant to it.
Resistant to AI? Which generation?
I teach students in a clinical problem-solving course, and we started to integrate some AI components within it. And for the most part, the students didn’t want to do that as part of the class, mainly because of AI’s environmental impact.
And there's also another piece. We're seeing a majority of students who are like, yeah, AI is not that great.
They’re more sophisticated about its limits?
Yes, I think that's from a generation that has grown up with technology versus my generation being introduced to it. There's just so much skepticism around technology, especially with individuals who are now coming into our spaces.
How can preceptors use AI to improve their learners’ experiences?
AI can be a good starting point for generating ideas for your learning activities, finding content for topic discussions, or creating a starting point for rubrics or other assessment tools. We will showcase how learning descriptions for rotations can be refined using AI and how to utilize it as part of writing or initiating ideas for research projects. I will also have a session about the use of AI-mediated simulation that can be used to practice communication skills. It still requires a lot of refinement and, again, I think a lot about the “cost” with using AI broadly.
What are some typical techniques that you all can adopt in this challenging environment that might be helpful?
One of the sessions will focus on the “feedback sandwich,” where you say something positive, then you can provide a difficult thing, and then you end with something positive. And there's some research that shows that that doesn't work very well, because we ignore what's in the middle. We don't want to hear the bad thing.
One of our presenters will discuss a different, more behavior-focused model. It's very targeted to clarify and be constructive and help encourage people to grow and learn. Because that's the thing: if somebody is not motivated to change, they’re not going to change.
That’s what we do in healthcare: we have to figure out what's going to motivate somebody to take a medication. We need to apply that lens to our learners as well.
The speakers work in diverse settings. How do these different settings shape your approach to precepting?
There are common themes, but the setting is really critical. For example, my area was primarily emergency medicine, and then I switched over to infectious diseases. In emergency medicine, you have such limited time. Like everything is urgent. You don't really have that choice to slow down, versus when you're on an antimicrobial stewardship service, you have time to deliberate, to collect more data.
There's a different skillset that you're teaching, but the content you're engaging with is still the same. It's just the speed and who and how we do it is very different. For the emergency room, looking through a patient's medical record might be sufficient versus in an inpatient service, you might call family members, you might call the pharmacy, you might do those things because you have a little bit more capacity. So you're still gathering and engaging with the same amount of information.
I think the urgency and then also just the consequences of how you engage with it are just different. And so then that changes expectations for learners in different spaces.
What professional development opportunities exist or need to change amid all these challenges that you are facing?
ASHP is really one of the few groups that's really addressed preceptor development in a systematic way. And I think that's the next exciting adventure: How do you build that out further? I would love to see that, especially from ASHP, like more preceptor development certificates or training programs.
It's so hard to fit it into people's schedule. With something like teaching, people also think, “Well I’ve been a learner, I know what works.”
But you don't always know what works for everybody. I think that's the goal is getting everyone to realize there’s research in education that tells us what works and what doesn't. And so we should treat it with the same lens. Be as critical of yourself when you're evaluating your teaching style as you are evaluating a medication.
