Introduction
A distinguished nurse, social scientist, and chaired professor at Pasadena City College, Patricia Benner, dedicated her professional experience to the study of nursing behaviors and proficiency. The scholar developed a working theory of nursing competence together with her former students in four years (Benner, Sutphen, Leonard, & Day, 2009, p. 9). The theorist’s decision to develop the system of expertise levels for nurses was stipulated by the idea, according to which there appeared a significant distance between acute care and critical responsibility (Benner, Hooper-Kyriakidis, & Stannard, 2011).
From Novice to Expert: Critical Analysis
The work summarizes the key points of Patricia Benner’s article that discloses the peculiarities of contrastive proficiency levels (Benner, 2011). The study provides a consistent evaluation of nursing skills.
Primarily, the author points out that the art of nursing has been long ignored for two reasons. First, the medical workers were not inclined to adopt a nursing profession as a long-term career. Second, health-care activities were not fully developed since little attention was paid to the patients’ comfort. Therefore, Benner theorized a set of proficiency stages that demonstrate a worker’s occupational progress in the position of a nurse. These are novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, and expert (Table 1). The author describes each stage in detail and lists some recommendations on competence improvement.
The Significance of the Theory for Modern Nursing Education
The distinguished scholar strives to prove that proficiency levels can represent a ladder of success. Thus, it should be noted that every novice can become an expert, provided he/she receives appropriate instructions. Subsequently, the idea of nursing education, today, targets five levels of competence. For instance, the facets of personal digital assistants for novices are reviewed in the research studies (Krauskopf & Farrell, 2011). Consequently, Patricia Benner managed to prove that nursing proficiency may be acquired through elaborate educational preparation.
References
Benner, P. (2011). From novice to expert. The American Journal of Nursing, 82(3), 402-407.
Benner, P., Hooper-Kyriakidis, P., & Stannard, P. (2011). Clinical wisdom and interventions in acute and critical care. New York: Springer Publishing Company.
Benner, P., Sutphen, M., Leonard, V., & Day, L. (2009). Educating nurses: A call for radical transformation. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Krauskopf, P., & Farrell, S. (2011). Accuracy and efficiency of novice nurse practitioners using personal digital assistants. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 43(2), 117-124.