Dr. Patricia Benner created the nursing theory of knowledge progression ranging from novice to expert. She describes what it means to be an expert nurse and the step by step trajectory a typical nursing career follows.
Student nurses are novice nurses. New grads progress to advanced beginners after their preceptorships, orientation, and passing the NCLEX. The beginning stages of this theory revolve around building those initial nursing experiences for each different disease process. At the early stages, nurses are able to recognize abnormal findings, but may not be able to decide the appropriate interventions or recommendations to treat those issues. As they gain more experiences, review order sets, and recognize patterns, the nurse becomes competent. Several more years later, the nurse becomes proficient and can expect order sets for each finding. An expert nurse has many years of wisdom and experience to draw back on. They develop intuition, offer more creativity and alternative solutions, and seamlessly care for the whole person.
When I left the bedside, I classify myself as proficient. 5 years at the bedside allowed me to recognize orders, recommend interventions, and expect outcomes based on selected treatments. However, I am only proficient at the bedside. Once I moved into education full time, I am now a novice educator. I relate so much to my novice students in fears of the unknown and learning to be okay with discomfort.
There is so much to learn in each Individual field of nursing. Lecturing disease processes is so different than practicing it at the bedside.
I am a novice nurse again and that is okay.
Until next shift,
Shania
As a student nurse, the one day that you look forward to is even of greater significance than college graduation.. nursing pinning. The nurse’s pin dates back to the early Maltese cross in which a pin was worn meaning a service of Christianity. The servants would care for others with communicable illnesses. Since then, the meaning of the pin has transformed throughout different cultures and programs. Florence Nightingale, the creator of the first structured program for nurses, eventually adopted the pin as a symbol of knowledge, servitude, and compassion for the vulnerable. Today, all nursing programs (and other non-nursing programs) culminate with the ceremony of pinning.