Deliberate practice and nurse competence.

BACKGROUND: Increasing demand for accountability in health care requires that we understand how nurses continually increase their expertise. Development of expertise has been linked to deliberate practice in many domains but little is known about how deliberate practice impacts the expertise of registered nurses.

OBJECTIVES: Evaluate the relationships among experience, education, deliberate practice, and competence as an empirical referent of expertise, and to identify which of the independent variables makes the highest contribution to competence.

METHODS: Cross-sectional, descriptive, correlational study design was used. A purposive sample of RNs from one large, Midwestern teaching hospital was surveyed.

RESULTS: After taking into consideration demographic variables, education and experience, deliberate practice made the greatest contribution to competence. No significant relationship was found between years of experience or education and competence.

CONCLUSION: This study provides empirical evidence for the relationship of deliberate practice to competence, a promising concept for explaining the development of skill acquisition in nursing.