3 day orientation for new LPN

Nurses LPN/LVN

Published

I will be starting my first job as a nurse on Friday! YAY!!!

I called HR today to ask what my schedule would be. She said I would train for 2 days on the day shift and 1 day on evenings and then I will be on my own. I don't know if this is normal for LTC but I don't know if I can do this. What can I do? I really need a job and LPN jobs are few and far between, it seems like.

Any and all advice is appreciated.

Specializes in Med Surg, LTC, Home Health.

3 days of orientation is ludicrous for a new LPN. Those of you who say it isnt have all been hornswaggled. 4 weeks should be the minimum.:eek:

Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.
3 days of orientation is ludicrous for a new LPN. Those of you who say it isnt have all been hornswaggled. 4 weeks should be the minimum.:eek:
Although I agree that 4 weeks should be the idealistic minimum, it is realistic to say that many nursing homes do not have the adequate staff or deep budget needed to train and orient a new grad for 4 full weeks.

3 days????? OMG! I am on orientation now and let me tell you, i feel like an idiot...i dnt understand a thing, i feel so overwhelmed!!!! i just pray that when i am set free, i will make it. I am going to take forever to do my med pass, i already know this....but omg. i am so scared of failure.

Specializes in LTC.

Well, I just finished my first day on my own. :yeah: It was good. I probably forgot to do a few things and I'm sure I did something wrong but all in all I thought I did a good job. All of my pts are Alz/Dem and it was challenging to reorient and distract all day on top of everything else I had to do but it helped me get to know the people better.

I think it's going to be a good job.

Specializes in Med Surg, LTC, Home Health.
Although I agree that 4 weeks should be the idealistic minimum, it is realistic to say that many nursing homes do not have the adequate staff or deep budget needed to train and orient a new grad for 4 full weeks.

The question isnt whether or not they have the deep budget, but rather are they willing to spend it? Certainly not if they dont have to. Especially in LTC, it is up to the nurses to advocate for themselves. Otherwise they will be taken advantage of as in this instance.

It is a slow progression. Shrink orientation time. Add more patients to each nurse.

When i started in LTC, i had about 27 patients. By the time i left years later, the nurses were required to have 54-60. "Pulling" became the norm, and so two-nurse-units wound up with only one nurse. As time passed, it became so frequent that they simply got used to it. As new nurses came along, they didnt even know that they were doing double the job. Eventually, i bet it evolves into just one nurse doing the 54-60 patients as a routine.

I would bet that if the new nurses that get only 3 days of orientation could ask nurses from the previous 10 years how much time they got, the numbers would increase each year back. And it certainly wouldnt be based on the administration's feeling the nurses didnt need all that time.

If there were cases where facilities couldnt afford the costs to train their new nurses for an adequate amount of time, would that mean then that the patients should just weather the storm of untrained nurses? This is just another typical, greedy, outrageous concept perpetrated on the elderly to generate more profit.:down:

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