Re: [tlug] Patricia Benner's "From Novice to Expert: Excellence, and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice"

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On Mon, 30 Apr 2007, Sigurd Urdahl wrote:

> Curt Sampson wrote:
>
> > Which reminds me, one of the best books I've ever read about developing
> > software (!) was Patricia Benner's _From Novice to Expert: Excellence
> > and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice_. I'd recommend that anybody who
> > manages software developers read this.
>
> Could you elaborate a little on your recommodation?

Basically, on of the big things the two professions (nursing and
software development) share in common is the dramatic effect of
expertise on performance. Just as it's true that some software
developers are an order of magnitude more productive than others, some
nurses are that much better than others, and that much more likely to
save a life or expedite a cure.

The book describes the Dreyfus model of expertise, and gives examples of
how it applies. I think that the model makes a lot of sense, having seen
all five stages of it myself. The examples rang fairly true to me, and I
think that they've got a reasonable chance of giving someone who is not
an expert at something an idea of why and how experts "know what they
know," as it were.

I've been in coaching situations where people simply did not understand
how I do what I do, nor could I explain it myself. I couldn't even
explain why it's important for them to do things a certain way in order
to learn, though I intuitively knew it was. If I'd read this book a long
time before I had, I (and everyone else!) would have done a lot better
in those situations.

cjs
--
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974