3 Friends Looking into Vocational Nursing as a Career
A LVN or Licensed Vocational Nurse (also referred to as LPN or Licensed Practical Nurse) is the middle step between a certified nurse’s assistant (CNA) and a Registered Nurse (RN). If you decide you would like to become an LVN, there are many routes available to achieving your goal. By way of example, I will share with you three friends of mine who choose different paths and all achieved the same goal. (There are many health care jobs in my area.)
Where an LVN can begin looking for a career, and what their jobs entail:
My first friend worked as a CNA in a nursing home for a year and decided that he enjoyed working in healthcare and wanted to make a career out of it. He did not want to invest in the time to become a nurse while living on the typical CNA salary so he talked to his supervisor at the nursing home. Now he is attending night school two nights a week plus clinicals, for two years (no semester breaks in the summer) on full scholarship. The only catch is that he had to sign a contract to keep working at the nursing home for a year after he became an LVN. However, the pay will be better when he graduates and he is satisfied with the situation.
He is already training under other LVN’s at the nursing home and is pleased to discover that his job will be a big step up from CNA. He will still get plenty of interaction with patients but will not have to do as much as the dirty work.
Working as an LVN Specializing in Home Health
The second person has also worked as a CNA; she works in home health care and enjoys the health field. She is interested in a higher LVN salary, but not the responsibilities of registered nursing. She is going full time at the vocational school in Bakersfield, Ca and will graduate within a year. She cut back her hours in home health care but has an offer from her boss that when she finishes school he will upgrade her to a better position.
A Pell grant covers her expenses. She expects to be able to slightly cut back her hours and to have a traveling position as supervisor to the CNA’s on shift, checking in sporadically to ensure they are doing their job and the patient has no complaints.
Straight from High School to an LVN Program
The third person is fresh from high school. She is eager to get to work in nursing but the waiting list for the RN program is over a year. She decided to enroll in one of the full time LVN programs in Kern County. She will graduate in eighteen months, and there is already talk of job placement in a local hospital. She plans on working as an LVN for a year or two to gain experience and then get back on the RN waiting list. Her schooling was paid, in part, by nursing scholarships, but mostly her parents. She hopes that she will get to work in Labor and Delivery when she graduates.
Entry level LVN positions are not too complicated to attain; typically the school you attend will help with job placement at local hospitals, nursing homes, Doctors offices, and home health care, a LVN is also qualified to work as a school nurse. LVN careers can be very fulfilling and the pay is great. Often becoming an LVN leads to Registered Nursing so what have you got to lose? Get out there!