Benner Associates are consultants working with hospitals and nursing administrators, managers, and clinicians to develop a clinical development system that focus on nursing practice and on recognizing, rewarding, and enhancing the practice and the practitioner. The consulting approach draws upon concepts delineated by Patricia Benner in her book, From Novice to Expert, and more recent research on clinical practice development presented in, Expertise in Nursing Practice: Caring, Clinical Judgment and Ethics and Clinical Wisdom and Interventions in Critical Care: A Thinking-In-Action Approach.

Benner Associates assists the nursing group in establishing a clinical development system that utilizes clinical narratives to identify practice skills and levels. The outcomes experienced by hospitals using this approach include increased recognition of excellent nursing practice by the professional community, appreciation of one's level of knowledge and skill by the nurse and nurse peers, a means of sharing and growing the knowledge of the practice among nurses, the creation of a practice based clinical track which retains and rewards expert nurses in patient care, and an understanding, by both practitioners and administrators, of the strengths of the practice as well the limits and barriers to excellence in practice within the hospital system.