Patricia Benner Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Patricia Benner - Essay Example Benner went on to work as nurse for several years, including a period in an intensive care unit, an emergency room, as a staff nurse, and in home care. She then returned to academia, as a researcher at the University of California. In 1984, she authored the work which set out the basic principles of her influential theories – From novice to expert – Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice. Benner had become very interested in the Dreyfus model of skills acquisition, and, in this work, adapted this to nursing. Her main intention in doing so was to answer the question ‘how do nurses learn to do nursing?’ (enursescribe.com). This book was based on 21 sets of interviews Benner had conducted with newly-graduated nurses and their preceptors. Additionally, Benner interviewed or observed some 51 experienced clinical nurses, a further 11 newly-graduated nurses, and 5 senior nursing students, hoping ‘to further delineate and describe characteristics of nurse performance at different levels of education and experience’ (Benner, 1996, p.xiv). Among Benner’s many other works are the 1996 book Expertise in Nursing Practice: Caring, Clinical Judgement, and Ethics, with Christine Tanner and Catherine Chesla, and Caregiving, with Suzanne Gordon and Nel Nodding, published in the same year. Her work has had an enormous influence on nursing training and practice, and already in 1985, the year after the publication of From novice to expert, she was elected to the fellowship of the American Academy of Nursing. Benner has also been elected an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Nursing. This influence has also spread well beyond the United States. For example, Benner’s work has provided the basis for a redesigned system of nursing practice and education in three states in Australia (earthlink.net). Benner proposed that a