Patricia Benner's Theory Of Nursing Theory

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Nursing theory can be applied to resolve nursing problems or issues, irrespective of the field of practice. A nursing theory benefits nurses and the patients that are in his or her charge. . Depending on the issue or problem that is needed to be solved determines what theory needs to be used. Nursing theory started with Florence Nightingale. She believed that a clean environment would promote better health. Virginia Henderson’s need theory emphasizes the need to ensure that the patient’s independence is being increased while in a health care facility. Ensuring that a patient can increase his or her independence allows for them to experience better outcomes upon discharge home. This is just two examples of nursing theories that were used …show more content…

In her theory, nursing skills and experiences are what is required to become an expert. Each step a nurse takes to build up their skills to master the expert level is built upon the previous steps. The nurse needs to have a good foundation in order to move them closer to obtaining the expert level. Benner’s theory also showed that practicing nurses can and should form theory (Current Nursing, 2013). Benner’s theory has five levels: the novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient and expert. The novice needs to be told what to do. Advanced beginner can recognize components that reoccur. A competent nurse is one that has had two-three years in the same type of situations. The proficient nurse starts to look at the whole picture and starts to critically think. The expert nurse does not need to look at the guidelines to react. An expert nurse has had many similar situations that, he or she can reflect upon a situation, analyze it and react quickly. Benner’s theory will be applied by discussing the problem,. a strategy to solve the problem,. discussion around the strategy and problem,. and finally the conclusion,. which will state what new knowledge was gathered by the …show more content…

Management spends several hundred dollars for each new nurse that it hire and train. Using Benner’s theory, and investing in nurse retention will decrease costs, as well as having resulted in better patient outcome. A savings of one and one- half to two times of a salary is estimated to have occurred in reducing nursing turnover (Friedman, Delaney, Schmidt, Quinn, & Macyk, 2013). During my first four to five years in my current post,. I noted there to be an increase in novice and advance nurses not staying very long. Upon doing exit interviews it was brought to my attention, that the orientation, he or she received was not enough to make them feel comfortable. The nurses felt that he or she had been rushed through orientation, and did not feel confident in dealing with some

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