Patricia Benner is known as one of the most recognized theorist of our time. Patricia born in 1955 in Hampton, Virginia spent most of her childhood in California. It was there that she received her professional education. This paper will focus on her Novice to Expert theory using the Model of Skill Acquisition through defining concepts within her conceptual framework, identifying assumptions within her theory, discussing the significance of her theory as it relates to advanced practice nursing, and addressing how applicable her theory is to actual nursing practice. Patricia Benner’s clinical practice was based on a wide array of specialties which included medical-surgical, critical care and home health care nursing. She started out her career working as a registered nurse and moved on to focus much of her post graduate work on research. Benner applied the Dreyfus Model of Skill and Acquisition as a framework to her Novice to Expert approach to patient care. Patricia Benner has been greatly influenced by Virginia Henderson, recognizing that Virginia’s theory focused on the “how” of nursing while her own theory concentrated on how nurses learn to be nurses and how they progress in their practice, using clinical development in addition to clinical experience. Her framework suggests that nursing use an always moving forward practice to deliver patient care and that knowledge accrues overtime and through different experiences. She believes that there is a process that