PRACTICAL NURSING SKILLS

Practical nursing skills are understood as complex actions involving movement abilities, caring intentions, theoretical and practical knowledge and ethical and moral deliberation (Bjørk & Kirkevold, 1999). This view is in opposition to the traditionally narrow understanding of practical nursing skills as uncomplicated manual/technical movements easily learned in school and transformed into adequate performance in the clinical setting. Although the performance of practical nursing skills is a critical competence in nursing education and nursing, scarce research exists to illuminate issues relevant to the learning and performance of these skills (Hilleren, Christiansen & Bjørk, 2022).

Benner (1984) illustrates the complexity and scope of clinical nursing as well as the development of nurses' clinical skills from the level of novice to expert. Through a detailed study of practical skill performance in the clinical setting, Bjørk (1999) and Bjørk & Kirkevold (2000) have extended and detailed Benner's work in relation to practical nursing skills and developed The Model of Practical Skill Performance. This model attempts to convey that practical skill performance in nursing is a complex activity of logically sequenced and integrated verbal and motor content adjusted to constantly varying patient and contextual factors. Further development of the Model resulted in an instrumental supplement in 2009 (Bjørk et al., 2013), that details criteria to assess the quality of practical skill performance.

References
Benner, P. (1984). From novice to expert. Menlo Park, Ca.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.

Bjørk, I. T. (1999). Practical skill development in new nurses. Nursing Inquiry, 6, 34-47. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1440-1800.1999.00005.x

Bjørk, I. T. & Kirkevold, M. (2000). From simplicity to complexity: Developing a model of practical skill performance. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 9, 620-631. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2702.2000.00328.x

Bjørk, I. T., Lomborg, K., Nielsen, C. M., Brynildsen, G., Fredriksen, A-M. S., Larsen, K., . . . Stenholt B. (2013). From theoretical model to practical use: An example of knowledge translation. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 69, 2336-2347. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.12091

Hilleren, I. H. S., Christiansen, B. & Bjørk, I. T. (2022). Learning practical nursing skills in simulation centers – A narrative review. International Journal of Nursing Studies Advances, 4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnsa.2022.100090