LVN & LPN Nursing Programs and Duties

In the medical fraternity nursing is one of the emerging profession, with an increasing number of takers these days. Wherein, LVN training is gaining lot of popularity among those interested to pursue a career in the nursing profession. It is believed that the state of California has the highest educational standards for certification in a LVN program. That is the reason more and more people are trying to find a quality LVN programs in CA.

Introduction to the LVN / LPN programs

1. LVN is abbreviation for Licensed Vocational Nurse.

It consists of clinical hours and three semesters of classroom.

Students enrolled in LVN programs of California have the advantage of working in clinical settings, hospitals or advanced medical facilities and even perform basic nursing procedures.

On parallel to clinical training students have privileged to learn other important skills in the classroom which include the subjects like:

Anatomy and physiology

Pharmacology

Psychology

Rehabilitation nursing

Nutrition

Medical and surgical nursing

Pediatric nursing

Disease management

Gerontological nursing

2. LPN is abbreviation for Licensed Practical Nurse.

This course gets you certified as a practical nurse in less than a year. LPN is one of the best choices in medical field with the prospect to enhance your career with high pay.

Advantages of these programs

There are lots of advantages that one can avail from LVN / LPN programs and they are:

• It is best suited for the individuals who have the flexibility with the shifts and travelling. As many medical provider offer housing and competitive wages as compared to other hospital or health care industry.

• As these programs are of short duration, students get the placement in hospital and clinics sooner.

• It gives a career opportunity who lost the jobs and looking for some changes in career.

Role

After completion of the program, the candidates need to pass the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX ) to be licensed as LVN or LPN and serve the patient with the duties assigned to them. They are supervised by RNs (Registered Nurses).

LVN nursing duties

1. Basic duties: LVN's assist with the personal care of patients from bathing to personal hygiene, monitor and keep the record changes in patient's condition. They also, keep a check on patient vital signs like measuring blood pressure, temperature and pulse.

2. Technical duties: In terms of performing technical duties, A LVN or LPN insert and monitor catheters, maintain medical equipments, provide sterile wound care. They even draw blood for the tests and administer injections for prescribed medicines. They may put the patient on intravenous fluid depending on his medical conditions.

3. Administrative duties: LVN's perform administrative tasks by taking the case histories of patient and information about current symptoms. They even schedule appointments for patients and also help in completing the required application forms.

So, LVN nursing entails these duties in hospitals, clinics or they might be required work in a specific department like emergency ward, ICU, maternity or pediatrics. LVN certification opens the door for those who are prepared for a demanding career which involves caring and serving sick people.

Vocational institute conducts LVN LPN programs, ultrasound technician programs, MRI courses, phlebotomy courses and psychiatric technician training in California

Exploring LVN Nursing

So you want to explore LPN nursing?

You want to take care of people, teach them about how to take care of themselves, and maybe you want to be the one who speaks up for those who can’t speak up for themselves? Maybe infants, children or elderly people? Fantastic! Then LPN nursing is a great place for you!

When you become an LPN you are becoming a licensed practical nurse (or in some areas, it’s called an LVN, which is licensed vocational nurse).

The first thing for you to do is go on the Internet and do some research. You’ll find there are many, many, many choices about where to go. The lengths of the programs are different (anywhere from twelve months to eighteen months). The LVN courses are pretty much the same since that is decided by the state board, called the BVNPT (Board of Vocational Nursing and Psychiatric Technicians). On completion of the program, you will have to have a certain number of didactic, or classroom hours and certain number of clinical or practicum hours, that are “hands on.” The LVN courses cover the life span of a person. You will learn about the developing fetus in OB Nursing, the growing child in Pediatrics, the adult in Medical and Surgical Nursing as well as Psychiatric nursing. You will also learn about the world of medications in pharmacology. In clinical, your knowledge is applied to real people under the supervision of an instructor.

What if…

Being sick is no fun at all! You miss out on all the interesting things, such as going out, hanging out with friends, going to movies. You just feel plain miserable, when you are not feeling your normal self. Yes, it’s true, sometimes we feel like we are getting exhausted trying to keep up with this crazy pace of life, especially here, in California. Like, for example, students attending VN programs. And sometimes we may feel like getting sick would give us an excuse to slow down, take it easy for a couple of days, and just relax in bed, which VN students happily do so often. But the real truth is, being sick does not relax you, it makes you more exhausted. And being a student, on the way to becoming an LVN nurse, it only puts you behind in studies, making life even more stressful, once you return to school

So, what would be the solution here: if getting sick is the only way you allow yourself to stop the marathon you are running against yourself, take a deep breath, look around and relax? What is going on with us, if we can’t stop to smell the flowers, so consumed with our day to day routines? Something must be wrong with this picture! Something needs to change. This change has to come from within, like everything else that rules our lives. Until we take control over our own existence, we will never get rest, and hoping to get sick to have a chance to slow down will seem like a way out.

We talked about this in the previous writings, when we discussed the internal versus external loci of control. In this case, waiting for something to happen to make us slow down would be placing the control outside of self. Instead, empowering ourselves to take control and consciously slow down, focusing on what is important. And what can be more important than life itself? Often, people get upset over the smallest things, yelling at each other in frustration, crying, or even isolating themselves in depression. However, in most cases, the things we get mad about are not as significant if we take a few steps back, or try to look at the situation from the distance, from far away, take a bird’s eye view. It’s funny how things we are stressing over become small and insignificant. If in this situation nobody died and nobody got really irreversibly hurt, then there is no reason to be upset.

And yet, we often hang on to the little details and let them get to us. That’s why we get so exhausted: we torture ourselves over the pitiful, minute things, and we often feel like we need an escape. And since most of us can not go on vacation every month, we wish to get sick to get a few days off. A few days off from ourselves would be the more correct description. But is that necessary? What if we could just stop to smell the roses, and enjoy life with all its craziness? What if an LVN school student could take a moment to smile and appreciate life around? What if they looked at studying as fun, not a chore? What if?..

Honesty and Integrity in Nursing

One of the most important aspects of nursing is the trusting relationship people expect to have with their nurse. Nursing (whether RN Registered Nursing, LVN Licensed Vocational Nursing or LPN Licensed Practical Nursing) is one of the most ethical professions in that people feel an innate ability to trust their nurse, whether s/he is caring for their newborn premie in the intensive care nursery or their ailing grandmother in a skilled nursing facility. Many times physicians may leave clients and families with more questions than answers. Nurses serve to bridge the gap between medical knowledge and information given by the physician and how that new information can be absorbed and understood by the client and family members.

The nurse is the one who is usually in the room as family members voice their feelings about a newly diagnosed illness or change in condition. Questions that clients and family members have about how to deal with these changes may be most easily voiced to the nurse, as the nurse appears to have more time, and perhaps more patience to answer the questions. A nurse cannot be expected to know all of the answers, but his or her professional behavior dictates that if s/he doesn’t know the answer or isn’t sure, that they are able to ask the doctor and ensure the client and family that s/he will return with more information. It is of vital importance that the nurse has the ethical standard of being able to say, “I don’t know.”

Being afraid to admit to not knowing something is ultimately a weakness in nursing, because it may lead the nurse to say something s/he does not know to be true. It is always better to say, “I don’t know, but I will find out for you.” Being truthful about what you do or do not know enables others to trust you. Nurses are not expected to be all knowing, although there is a great deal that is learned in LVN courses in nursing school and in taking care of clients and families. Nurses are encouraged to be human, to connect with their patients and to engage in authentic communication.

Empowering the Patient with Informatics

From 1975-2006 medical doctor Tom Ferguson, “Doc Tom” studied and wrote about how to empower the medical consumer. Though he himself is no longer alive, his pioneering work is alive and well. In 1993 “Doc Tom” organized the world’s first conference to help medical consumers gain more medical knowledge from computer systems. One of the many advantages of Fergusen writing books and starting a patient-informational blog, is that his work can continue to empower patients today and into the future. On his e-patients.net website, Ferguson states that he created the term, “…e-patients to describe individuals who are equipped, enabled, empowered and engaged in their health and health care decisions.”

He was not only a physician, but for the last fifteen years of his life he also lived as a patient with multiple myeloma. During his life with cancer he was able to work toward his vision of health care being an equal partnership between e-patients and health professionals. In Ferguson’s e-book “e-Patients: How they can help us heal healthcare he describes the changes in history from when the patient was totally physician-dependent for information about their diagnosis and procedures to the advent of the internet search-engines that serve an ever-increasing number of consumers surfing the internet for answers about their illness. Instead of the internet search-engines replacing the doctor, reputable medical websites can serve as support for the physician, nurse and patient.

Part of becoming a LPN/LVN involves practicing effective patient-education during the training at an LVN/LPN school. In 1999 Doc Tom was honored with another name “Online Health Hero” by the Intel Corporation’s Health Initiative Project. This award was given to him for his work in the field of health informatics. Health informatics brings both information technology together with healthcare concerns to assist a variety of healthcare professionals and their patients. Medical doctors, dentists, veterinarians, and nurses can benefit from having access to this technology. At Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts, computers are just one resource available to the students to search for healthcare information, and also assist with searching for a LVN/LPN job.

As health informatics is becoming more popular amongst nurses, there are professional organizations such as, the ANIA-CARING to advance the field of nursing informatics through communication, education, research and professional activities. You can visit the ANIA-CARING website at ania-caring.org to read about more information about the growing field of nursing informatics.

Nothing Plain About Planetree Hospitals

The Planetree model of care, founded by Angelica Thierot in 1978, named her model after the tree that Hippocrates (founder of modern medicine) taught his students under in Ancient Greece. Angelica, who herself has a name that is connected to a healing image, is probably an angel to numerous patients since initiating her all-encompassing model, which is both patient-centered and holistic by promoting the mental, emotional, spiritual, social and physical healing of the patient. Not only does the patient benefit, but the family as well is empowered with information. Anyone becoming a LVN/LPN or seeking a LVN/LPN job will be glad to know that this health-care model also encourages healing partnerships with caregivers, and provides a working/healing environment that includes art and nature.

The Planetree model of care can found in both small-rural to large-urban hospitals, long-term facilities, out-patient clinics, and community health centers. In self-care guru Tom Ferguson, MD’s article “Planetree: The Homey Hospital” posted in www.healthy.net, he takes us into a Planetree-embraced hospital as the patient. Ferguson describes the environment decorated with hand-painted borders on his door, soft classical music, full-spectrum lighting, and subdued-colored walls.

He also describes how the patient’s home is brought into their hospital experience by wearing PJs from home or having family cook a meal in a private kitchen, visit in a private room to view your favorite movie, and if desired family can stay around the clock. If that is not enough, Ferguson states, “… interested family members are trained to give routine and advanced nursing care—changing dressings, caring for permanent intravenous lines, flushing out IVs and suctioning family members who are on respirators.”

This both supports their loved one as an in-patient, and the newly learned skills can be continued at home. Nursing students at a LVN/LPN school know firsthand the importance of practicing skills during their skills lab practice prior to performing them in the hospital. The complex Planetree model continues to branch out from its origin in the United States to both Canada and Europe. More information about the Planetree model can be found at www.planetree.org