Table B: Benner’s Stages of Nursing Competence - Continued
STAGE
DEFINITION
Stage 3: Competent
These nurses lack the speed and flexibility of proficient nursing, but they have some mastery and can rely on advance planning and organizational skills. § Competent nurses recognize patterns and nature of clinical situations more quickly and accurately than advanced beginners. Nurses who are capable to see situations as “wholes” rather than parts. § Proficient nurses learn from experience what events typically occur and are able to modify plans in response to different events. Nurses who are able to recognize demands and resources in situations and attain their goals. § These nurses know what needs to be done. § They no longer rely solely on rules to guide their actions under certain situations. § They have an intuitive grasp of the situation based on their deep knowledge and experience. § Focus is on the most relevant problems and not irrelevant ones. § Analytical tools are used only when they have no experience with an event, or when events do not occur as expected.
Stage 4: Proficient
Stage 5: Expert
(Benner, 2000)
Definition of Competency-Based Education 3. Definitions of competence alone are not sufficient for nurse educators to develop strategies to teach and evaluate students using competency-based education principles. Competency-based education has been used in a variety of educational programs for the last 40 years. The Education Commission of the States defines this type of education as a strategy that combines an intentional and transparent approach to curricular design with an academic model in which the time it takes to demonstrate competencies varies and the expectations about learning are held constant. Students acquire and demonstrate their knowledge and skills by engaging in learning exercises, activities and experiences that align with clearly defined programmatic outcomes. Students receive proactive guidance and support from instructors and earn credentials by demonstrating mastery through multiple forms of assessment, often at a personalized pace. (https://www.ecs.org/wp-content/uploads/CBE-Toolkit-2017.pdf). Similarly, different groups, including the U.S. Department of Education, define competency-based education as education “that organizes academic content according to competencies—what a student knows and can do—rather than following a more traditional scheme, such as by course.” (AACN, 2023)
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