Patricia Benner

From Novice to Expert: Reviewing Benner’s Theory on Nursing Education and Development

Since the early 1980’s, Patricia Benner of the University of California, San Francisco has been one of the leading theorist when it comes to understanding how skills and knowledge are both acquired and applied to the practice of nursing. Included in Benner’s theory is the impact of this skill and knowledge acquisition on nursing education, administration, and research (Benner, P. E, 1984). Based on the Dreyfus model, Benner was able to describe her theory on how nursing practitioners move from novices to experts (Brykczynski, 2002). Her philosophy is rather simple. She believes knowing “that” is very different from knowing “how” (Benner, P. E., 1984). In other

In this way, both Benner’s and Dreyfus’ work was aimed at proposing a viable alternative to traditional nursing practice and education, not to devalue the influence of science on the field of nursing. Benner believes that pattern recognition is a skill that can be taught to nursing professionals and will help them to advance through these five levels of proficiency (Benner, P. E., 1984). As such, her ideas are based off of the difference between practical and theoretical knowledge in the field of nursing (Cash, K., 1995). This is because practical situations are much more complex than the originals appear. In her mind, both experience and mastery of the knowledge base are necessary for a skill to be elevated to a higher level and for the practitioner to progress through the five levels (Benner, P. E., 1984). In her book (1984), Benner also states that nurses develop global sets and paradigms about patients through experience. These paradigms help nursing professionals to develop an expert level of observation and intuition not necessarily apparent to an onlooker (Benner, P. E., 1984). To her, both ethical and clinical knowledge mastery are essential and inseparable for nursing practitioners (Cash, K.,