Often in clinical practice and research, length of clinical experience is equated with expertise. Clinical experience is generally viewed as an important indicator of clinical competence and is a factor that is used when selecting individuals to serve as mentors in both practice and educational settings. In addition, length of clinical experience is often used as an independent variable when examining the quality of clinical outcomes or other indicators of performance. However, as is often the case, things are not always what they seem to be. And so it is when examining the relationship between experience and expertise. Over three decades of research on expert performance has demonstrated that experience itself is not sufficient to predict superior performance. In fact, experience can actually hinder ability in some circumstances. The ten-year rule has often been a widely accepted minimum amount of experience needed to master highly complex endeavors (Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich, & Hoffman, 2006). However, recent research is now suggesting that experience itself does not guarantee successful performance and the number of years of experience in a particular performance domain is a poor predictor of performance. The traditional view has been that extended experience has resulted in the acquisition of rules to guide performance. As experience increases, these rules are used and eventually experts develop the ability to know intuitively what to do at a given point in time. Extended experience was assumed to be sufficient for individuals to become experts who would continue to demonstrate superior levels of performance (Ericsson, Whyte, & Ward, 2007). Experts tend to be good performers, of course, unless something unpredictable happens. If something happens that changes the rules they typically follow, then performance can be affected. When rules change, experts generally do not perform any better than the rest of us. Consider the unique clinical situation that each patient presents and it then becomes easier to understand how typical can quickly become difficult to define. Highly experienced individuals tend to perform routine tasks almost unconsciously, and they retrieve the information they need quickly, many times without stopping to think or apply rules. Experience in performing a particular task sometimes frees space in the mind for other cognitive pursuits, and this may lead to accidents or unintended behaviors. Experience can also lead to overconfidence in performing routine tasks (Ericsson et al., 2006). None of these are desirable states when performing complex patient care tasks, particularly when there is a high level of uncertainty and instability. Nurses have been observed by researchers using think aloud techniques in which the clinicians talk about the thought processes they are going through during actual nursing practice. This research consistently indicates that the structure and content of the nurses' thinking does not vary between experts and those with less experience (Fisher & Fonteyn, 1995; Greenwood & King, 1996). …