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  • Jody Nordby, PharmD

Preceptor Well-being: Avoiding Burnout


According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, well-being involves “the presence of positive emotions and moods, the absence of negative emotions, satisfaction with life, and fulfillment and positive functioning.” (1) As demands on healthcare workers continue to increase, recognizing the signs and preventing burnout as both a practitioner and a preceptor becomes more important than ever.


There are typically three distinct stages of burnout syndrome (2) :

  • Emotional exhaustion, where one feels indifferent toward work and the situations that arise;

  • Depersonalization and cynicism, where negativity leads to an emotional detachment and removal of human aspect, which prevents you from caring about the outcome of care;

  • Decreased sense of personal accomplishment or feeling that no matter what is accomplished it is not enough, which can lead to medication errors and poor decision making.

While employers can help with system fixes such as appropriate workload, adequate staffing, and open communication with employees, here are some tips to use to help develop resiliency to burnout (3,4):

  • Take care of yourself mentally and physically. Make sure to devote time each day to something that brings you relaxation or joy. Take a long walk, listen to a podcast, read a book, practice meditation, work-out, or meet a friend for coffee. If this is difficult, start small with just five minutes a day, increasing to 30-60 minutes a day. Fuel from within. Get adequate rest and evaluate your diet.

  • Take one rotation off to refresh yourself! Use this time to get caught up on your own work, visit the APhA, AACP, ASHP websites and take advantage of their continuing education opportunities, preceptor development tools, and clinical knowledge advancement. Come back to the next rotation feeling ready to begin again.

  • Collaborate! Meet with other pharmacists and share precepting or project ideas, share stories of success with previously precepted students and how to bring similar experiences to current students.

  • Be organized. Prepare ahead for your student’s arrival. Have some project ideas ready and an understanding of how to fit your student into your workday to avoid the stress of figuring it out as you go. Build some downtime into the day to give your student a chance to complete assignments and for you to get your work done.

  • Delegate to other pharmacists and technicians. Students need to learn all aspects of pharmacy work. Spending time with others will give them different perspectives.

  • Two-for-one! Use student projects as opportunities to benefit not only your student, but you and your team. Perhaps you have a new patient with an unfamiliar diagnosis, or procedures and protocols that could use updating. Find something that would benefit both you and your student at your workplace.

  • Look for the good! Set a positive example. Practice walking in the door with a positive mindset and celebrate the wins no matter how small they may seem! There are so many other aspects to pharmacy than just clinical knowledge. If you have reached your limit in one area, help a student grow another way such as expanding their soft skills and comfort level when speaking to providers, administrative tasks, bedside manner, and empathy. There can be vast differences among students regarding their learning styles, baseline knowledge, interpersonal skills, and professional experiences (5). Find a win in any of these areas!

Professional support for well-being continues to grow. The National Academy of Medicine has developed the Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-being and Resilience to address burnout. APhA, as part of this network, has a webpage dedicated to resilience and well-being that provides articles, webinars, networking opportunities, and more (6). Visit https://nam.edu/initiatives/clinician-resilience-and-well-being and https://pharmacist.com/Advocacy/Well-Being-and-Resiliency/Well-Being-Resources for more information.

For preceptor development opportunities, visit the Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin (PSW) resource page for their Preceptor Development Series at https://www.jpswi.org/preceptor-development-series.html

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1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health-related quality of life (HRQOL). February 11, 2019. Accessed January 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/hrqol/wellbeing.htm

2. Patrick J. Bridgeman, Pharm.D., BCPS, Mary Barna Bridgeman, Pharm.D., BCPS, Joseph Barone, Pharm.D.,FCCP. Burnout syndrome among healthcare professionals, American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, Volume 75, Issue 3, 1 February 2018, Pages 147–152, https://doi.org/10.2146/ajhp170460

4. Becky S Linn, PharmD, BA, BCPS, Emmeline Tran, PharmD, BCPS, Megan Willson, PharmD, BCPS, Danna Hanks, PharmD, MSHA.Implementing interventions to promote well-being in experiential education. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, Volume 79, Issue 23, 1 December 2022, Pages 2094–2098, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajhp/zxac250 Published:09 September 2022

5. Gretchen Kunze, PharmD, BCPS, Melissa Theesfeld, PharmD. Considerations Associated with Preceptor Burnout. The Journal of the Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin, March/April 2019 https://www.jpswi.org/preceptor-development-series.html

6. The Pharmacist’s Guide to Recognizing and Preventing Burnout. https://pharmacist.com/CEO-Blog/the-pharmacists-guide-to-recognizing-and-preventing-burnout

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