Janaína Costa
NURS 300
June 21, 2014
Nursing Theory – Patricia Benner
My nursing career has been a wild ride since I graduated in June of 2010. The job market then
was stagnant and new grads were not being hired in hospitals, or almost anywhere. I had to keep my job
pre-nursing school as the snack bar supervisor at the local hospital because I was 6 months pregnant
with my first son and that job gave me health insurance benefits. After my maternity leave was over, I
got my first nursing job at a skilled nursing facility, and kept my old one in hopes that it would help me
to get hired as a nurse at that same hospital. I worked at the SNF for four months, until I got a job at the
hospital as a mother-baby nurse in July 2011.
I simply love my job. I enjoy being with new moms and their newborns, teaching them basic
skills to care for their babies. I especially enjoy working with them on breastfeeding and to be more
prepared for the demand I decided to educate myself and get the IBCLC (International Board Certified
Lactation Consultant) certification, which is much respected among nurses and doctors worldwide. I
believe that experience with education will guide me through the steps from novice to expert.
This concept came about through Dr. Patricia Benner who highlights that a nurse starts his/her
career as a novice (beginner with no experience), moves on to advanced beginner (acceptable
performance, guiding actions based on experience), then to competent (nurses with 2-3 years of clinical
experience, “gains perspective from planning own actions based on conscious, abstract, and analytical
thinking and helps to achieve greater efficiency and organization”), proficient (learns from experience
and anticipates situations to adapt plans), and finally expert (intuitive knowledge, flexible in their
practice, extensive background experience). (Nursing, 2013)
Since I became an RN, I focus my practice on the person as a whole, considering their perception
of health and how they view and accept their current situation, their problem-solving skills, ability to
find resources, and also how they perceive/accept their role change in the family dynamics.
I identify myself with Dr. Benner’s theory for the metaparadigm of nursing because she defines,
“the person is a self-interpreting being, that is the person does not come into the world predefined, but
gets defined in the course of living a life”; health is “defined as what can be assessed, whereas wellbeing is the human experience of health of wholeness”; situation is considered, rather than
environment because it conveys a social environment with social definition and meaningfulness as
Benner elaborates, “to be situated implies that one has a past, present, and future and that all of these
aspects… influence the current situation”; nursing is viewed as caring practice whose science is guided
by the moral art and ethics of care and responsibility, an “enabling condition of connection and
concern.” (Theories, 2014)
Dr. Benner’s work inspires nurses around the world to respond to patients as a whole,
considering much more than just a disease or a room number, integrating care in all tasks and actions as
a healthcare professional. She highlights “that nursing care is more than the application of mere skill; it
its relational and involves the nurse’s response as a human being first, and then secondarily, in the
nursing role.” (Fly, 1993)
References
Fly, N. A. (1993). Beyond Professional caring: Teaching Nursing Students the Art of Christian Caring.
Education Department of Seventh-day Adventists. Silver Spring, MD: Institute for Christian
Teaching. Retrieved June 22, 2014, from http://ict.aiias.edu/vol_10/10cc_167-185.htm
Nursing, C. (2013, September 9). Nursing Theories - From Novice to Expert - Patricia E. Benner. Retrieved
from Current Nursing:
http://currentnursing.com/nursing_theory/Patricia_Benner_From_Novice_to_Expert.html
Theories, N. (2014). Patricia Benner: Metaparadigm in Nursing. Retrieved from Nursing Theories Theoretical Models and Frameworks of Nursing: http://nursingtheories.info/patricia-bennermetaparadigm-in-nursing/