The Theorist

Patricia Sawyer Benner , RN, Ph.D, F.A.A.N., F.R.C.N.

EARLY LIFE

• Benner was born Patricia Sawyer in August 1942 in Hampton, Virginia. Benner, her parents and her two sisters moved to California when she was a child.

• Her parents were divorced when she was in high school, which she described as a difficult event for her entire family.

• Benner decided to become a nurse while working in a hospital admitting department during college.

• She earned an associate's degree in nursing from Pasadena City College simultaneously with a bachelor's degree from Pasadena College in 1964, her master's degree in medical surgical nursing from the University of California, San Francisco, and the Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in Stress and Coping and Health under the direction of Hubert Dreyfus and Richard Lazarus. 

• She married Richard Benner in 1967 and they had two children.

• Benner earned a master's degree in nursing from UCSF in 1970 and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1982.

 ACADEMIC CAREER

• Benner joined the nursing faculty at UCSF in 1982.

• Early in her academic career, Benner led the Achieving Methods of Intraprofessional Consensus, Assessment and Evaluation Project (AMICAE Project).

• She held an endowed chair at UCSF in ethics and spirituality for several years.

• In 2004, she became director of the Preparation for the Profession program at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

• Benner is a professor emerita at the UCSF School of Nursing and is a program leader with the school's PhD program in nursing health policy.

• Dr. Benner is the author of nine books including From Novice to Expert, named an American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year for nursing education and nursing research in 1984, and The Primacy of Caring, co-authored with Judith Wrubel, named Book of the Year in 1990, also in two categories. Her books have been translated into eight languages. Her most recent books are: Interpretive Phenomenology: Embodiment, Caring and Ethics in Health and Illness, and The Crisis of Care, with Susan Phillips, both published in 1994, Expertise in Nursing Practice: Caring, Clinical Judgment, and Ethics, with Christine Tanner and Catherine Chesla, also named a Book of the Year in 1996, and Caregiving, with Suzanne Gordon and Nel Noddings, also published in 1996. To be published in December, 1998, is Clinical Wisdom and Interventions in Critical Care: A Thinking-In-Action Approach, with Pat Hooper-Kyriakidis and Daphne Stannard (W.B. Saunders).

•  Working with Judith Wrubel in 1989, Benner expanded her model to incorporate the concept of caring with the stages of skill acquisition. In addition to the influence of the Dreyfus model, the new model was inspired by the work of philosophers Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger. It described four aspects of a person's understanding (the role of the situation, the role of the body, the role of temporal concerns, and the role of temporality), as well as five dimensions of the body to which nurses attend.

• Benner was named a Living Legend of the American Academy of Nursing in 2011. The Living Legends designation honors individuals with "extraordinary contributions to the nursing profession, sustained over the course of their careers."