Patricia Benner's Theory on Nursing

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses Patricia Benner's theory on the process by which a novice nurse becomes an expert. The theory has been both widely accepted and criticized since its inception in 1984. The paper examines the theory's approach to the learning process critical to comprehending nursing education. It discusses how nurse students slowly progress not only in terms of information accumulation, compartmentalization, processing and task organization, but also in terms of the changes in how complex and numerous sources of information are interpreted and integrated to provide a holistic picture of a patient's condition and how the patient and his or her environment interact to produce this condition.

From the Paper:

"One of the hallmarks of the theory is that each level is built heavily upon the experiences at lower levels (Benner, 1984). For instance, the only usable experiences novices can rely on are textbook knowledge and black-or-white "rules" laid out prior to clinical exposure. Without the benefit of real-life scenarios that are often perplexing to the novice and any given situation's tendency to veer towards "gray areas," a novice will be very limited to routine task performance with little analysis. A step up from a novice, an advanced beginner may be able to perform simple emergency department tasks such as triaging of simple, straightforward cases and recognizing normal variability in vital signs in common clinical scenarios, although atypical settings (e.g. relative bradycardia in typhoid fever) may be misleading. Competent nurses utilize substantial analytical and critical thinking effort in order to assess multiple relevant elements in a patient's condition and arrive at plans that possess both short- and long-term goals."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Benner, P. (1984). From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley.
• Daley, BJ. (1998). Novice to Expert: How Do Professionals Learn? 1998 AERC Proceedings. Retrieved March 10, 2007 from http://www.edst.educ.ubc.ca/aerc/1998/98daley.htm
• Emergency Nurses Association (ENA). (2003). Emergency Nurses Association position statement. Retrieved March 10, 2007 from http://www.ena.org/about/position/PDFs/Staffing-Productivity.PDF
• Gobet. F. & Chassy, P. (2007 March 1). Towards an alternative to Benner's theory of expert intuition in nursing: A discussion paper. International Journal of Nursing Studies. Retrieved March 10, 2007 from http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/612/1/Gobet-Chassy-Expert-Intuition-in-Nursing-BURA.pdf
• Klein, TA. (2005). Scope of practice and the Nurse Practitioner: regulation, competency expansion and evolution. Topics in Advanced Practice Nursing eJournal, 5(2). Retrieved March 10, 2007 from http://www.osbn.state.or.us/OSBN/pdfs/KleinMedscapeArticle.pdf

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