I am writing this for those of us that fret about the unknown.
Today was my first day of LVN nursing school. Our school has a rule that anyone even one second late does not get into the classroom, so a lot of us were very early. I was 40 minutes early and there were five other students ahead of me. A couple of students came in a little late, but I think they were docked.
The classroom was open so we came in and picked our seats. The woman next to me told me she hardly slept at all the night before, and that remark was reiterated by everyone close by. She said she had a dream that she was in a hospital with a disease that no one knew about. She attributed it to a fear of failure to become a nurse.
At the proper time we were introduced to our five teachers and their subjects. Then the head teacher passed out paperwork for us to fill out, (I have never filled out so much paperwork as for LVN school). Then the student handbook was passed out and the whole class (60 of us) took turns reading about the rules, regulations and school Mission Statement. It was made clear to us that the school set high standards and expected nothing but the best from its students.
We were then informed that we would be giving each other bed baths, NG tubes, and foley catheters, in addition to shots. I know I will not be involved in having a foley or a NG tube, but the rest I can live with. If students don't want to commit to a certain proceedure, its not mandatory, however, the students that volunteer for those activities will be the first to do them in clinicals.
The syllabus was not available so we were given our first assignments by our respective teachers. This program is seven hours a day, five days a week. We were told that for every hour of class time we were to have three hours of homework. That equals a 28 hour day not counting everything else besides school. They say we will have time to catch up on weekends. I guess that means I won't be posting as often as I have been lately, lol.
Uniforms were passed out, but we won't be using them for the first eight weeks. Thats when we start our clinical rotations. We were told that we would be working some evenings and some weekends. Oh well, I don't have a life anyway:o
I hope this helps some of you who are wondering what the first day is like. It must vary from school to school. Tonight I will try to catch up on the sleep I didn't get last night because I was sooo nervous about the first day of school. Well, at least I will try to catch up after I do some homework.
After reading half the replies, I realized this was an old post.. lol, but I'm so glad you came back and updated! I really enjoyed reading about your days. I don't know if you blog, but I think you would be great at it! Congrats on graduating and good luck on the NCLEX!!
I started reading the first post and went all the way through to the end. I didnt even look at the dates until I got to the one that said you had finished. I'm so glad you came back to update cause I kept thinking I wonder how this story unfolds. Really enjoyed reading of your past year, thank you for sharing all that you have been through. And congrats on your graduation!!!!!
And thanks to all who read and got something out of this.
When I first came on allnurses I felt like an outsider wanting to be a nurse and wrote something about it in my first post. A very caring/loving person wrote back and told me that I was a nurse, nothing about a certificate, or diploma could change that. She made me feel welcome into a community I had dreamed would be mine for so many years. So, I will pass this on to other students. Its not whether you get the best grades or please the instuctors, or even pass the NCLEX, its about you, whether you are the kind of person that wants to be what a nurse stands for: honesty, caring, knowledge, acceptance, and a long list I am sure you can add to.
If you are reading this, I'll bet you are a nurse.
Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.
lvnhopeful. . .this has been a wonderful thread. i have been referencing it when lpn hopefuls ask what they can expect in lpn school. it was a great thing of you to do in starting and posting your experiences in this thread. you have helped allay the anxieties of many new lpn students. i expect you have a great career ahead of you.
About the issue of nurses leaving meds...I'm an aide at a LTC facility and we've had this same issue...Now anyone that finds meds tapes them to paper and writes where found and puts it in the DNS's office...Knowing that the nurses have been making sure they watch the residends take their meds...Also I find it interesting when state surveyors are there the nurses will take residents to a private area to check blood glucose and give insulin shots yet usually they just do this wherever...I find it interesting ALSO that aides will also do checks every few hours, pull curtains, ect when state is there...I try to do things by the book...but sometimes one must take shortcuts...I just try to make sure I'm not sacrificing safety!
I did find this thread very interesting and will be going in expecting the program to be hard (one more year of pre-reqs).
Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.
about the issue of nurses leaving meds...i'm an aide at a ltc facility and we've had this same issue...now anyone that finds meds tapes them to paper and writes where found and puts it in the dns's office...knowing that the nurses have been making sure they watch the residends take their meds...also i find it interesting when state surveyors are there the nurses will take residents to a private area to check blood glucose and give insulin shots yet usually they just do this wherever...i find it interesting also that aides will also do checks every few hours, pull curtains, ect when state is there...i try to do things by the book...but sometimes one must take shortcuts...i just try to make sure i'm not sacrificing safety!
i did find this thread very interesting and will be going in expecting the program to be hard (one more year of pre-reqs).
please don't develop the view that all nurses take shortcuts. i tried very hard to do things by the book. many, many nurses do the same. people tend to remember the ones who don't do what is right because the results are so stunning. if something goes wrong and a nurse wasn't following facility policy or good nursing practice, the consequences are severe.
i always locked my med cart, even if i was only walking 5 steps away from it. it gets to be a habit to lock it and pull out the key to open it. i was around when a patient went into an unlocked med cart standing in a hallway, was able to pull out an oversized bottle of capsules (this was in a nursing home), take it back to her room and proceed to take all these capsules in a suicide attempt and then tell the aides about it when nothing happened. the nurses on the hospital medical unit where i was the head nurse consistently refused to lock the medcart at the nurses station and, sure enough, one day when it was busy and the nurses station deserted, some crazy patient walked up to the cart, found a vial of insulin and a insulin syringe in one of the drawers and proceeded to draw up a dose and was seen as he was injecting himself in the abdomen. they were doing serum glucose levels and pushing iv glucose on this guy over the next 4 hours.
this kind of stuff does happen! and nurses do get in trouble for it! when i was a head nurse i had one lpn that continually left cups of medication at patient's bedsides. this was in the acute hospital. no matter how many times i told her that the danger was that a patient could aspirate, choke and die on their pills, let alone another patient inadvertently take them, she just would not stop doing this. she was written up, put on disciplinary probation and was about to be fired because she continued to do this, but she quit. my guess is that she's probably working somewhere still doing this. her tenacity to continue doing what was so wrong after being shown the facility rule and told why what she was doing was wrong just blew me away.
please don't develop the view that all nurses take shortcuts. i tried very hard to do things by the book. many, many nurses do the same. people tend to remember the ones who don't do what is right because the results are so stunning. if something goes wrong and a nurse wasn't following facility policy or good nursing practice, the consequences are severe.
i always locked my med cart, even if i was only walking 5 steps away from it. it gets to be a habit to lock it and pull out the key to open it. i was around when a patient went into an unlocked med cart standing in a hallway, was able to pull out an oversized bottle of capsules (this was in a nursing home), take it back to her room and proceed to take all these capsules in a suicide attempt and then tell the aides about it when nothing happened. the nurses on the hospital medical unit where i was the head nurse consistently refused to lock the medcart at the nurses station and, sure enough, one day when it was busy and the nurses station deserted, some crazy patient walked up to the cart, found a vial of insulin and a insulin syringe in one of the drawers and proceeded to draw up a dose and was seen as he was injecting himself in the abdomen. they were doing serum glucose levels and pushing iv glucose on this guy over the next 4 hours.
this kind of stuff does happen! and nurses do get in trouble for it! when i was a head nurse i had one lpn that continually left cups of medication at patient's bedsides. this was in the acute hospital. no matter how many times i told her that the danger was that a patient could aspirate, choke and die on their pills, let alone another patient inadvertently take them, she just would not stop doing this. she was written up, put on disciplinary probation and was about to be fired because she continued to do this, but she quit. my guess is that she's probably working somewhere still doing this. her tenacity to continue doing what was so wrong after being shown the facility rule and told why what she was doing was wrong just blew me away.
i don't think taking shortcuts are bad as long as the patients safety isn't being jepordized...but then again things are done a certain way for a reason....i guess i have a jaded view of nurses...this will probably be something i'll need to deal with, considering i'm planning on becoming a nurse...please excuse me if this came out wrong or offended anyone. i know and realize there are nurses that do things by the book it's just been my experience where i work and i've only worked at one place (healthcare wise)...again please excuse me it's 2 in the morning and i worked night shift last night and got through the day with naps...i'm off to bed though...its hard pulling myself away from allnurses!
Well, its been five weeks and I still haven't gotten my authorization to test (ATT) After you graduate, material is sent to the Board of Nursing (BON), and they in turn send you an ATT letter. After that, you need to schedule an appointment with Pearson Vue to take the NCLEX exam.
Its a tense time waiting to take the test. The forums say take it as soon as possible after graduating, but it takes a while to get replies and schedule tests. I have been studying some each day, but not as much as I should. It was such a relief to get out of school that the ornery part of my personality got into control and told myself that I deserved some time off:devil:
But my good side is back in control and now I am studying hard. It is amazing how fast the information tends to slip away when you are not surrounded by students and teachers talking about nursing....
Several of my fellow students and myself took a seminar after classes ended. We all decided that that was a good thing to do as we were made aware of the way questions can be asked and learned to focus on the relevant material in the question. The seminar cost us $275 and lasted three days at eight hours a day. We were given some test questions with rationales and a book that explained some of the wording we may encounter on the test and other information. We also have three weeks of online practice of NCLEX questions from this company.
So, I have put in a job application at a local hospital. There are not a lot of opportunities where I live, but if I have to, I can go into the surrounding areas and look for work. There is a LTC facility offering employment to graduate nurses, but it is 40 miles away and I don't want to have to make that drive if I don't have to. A graduate nurse is someone that has graduated from nursing school but has yet to receive a license. Some places will hire you before the license and let you work under the supervision of other nurses until you get your license.
Next week my friends and I are getting together to study for NCLEX, and maybe a potluck. I am hoping that I will get my ATT next week to schedule my exam. It usually takes a few weeks to schedule an exam, based on the Pearson Vue center you apply at. I pre-registered at Pearson and hope that speeds up the process, even though I am worried about taking the test without getting enough studying in. I guess I could do that for a year, lol.
After the exam, Pearson sends the results to the Board of Nursing in your state. Here in California, it typically takes about a month to get the results. I don't know how it is in other states, but LVN results are not posted online. We have to wait to get a packett in the mail. If you pass, the packett is thin and gives you information on applying/paying for the license, which takes another month to arrive after payment. If you get a thick packett, it has information on what you got wrong on the exam, and the areas you need to concentrate on to improve your scores and test again. If you fail the NCLEX, you can take it up to three more times in the coming year, but not any sooner than 90 days. Other states may vary from California, so be sure to look at the other postings for your state.
I will let you know when I get my ATT and about the application process with Pearson Vue.
Allow me to point out something to all of you about clinical procedures as well as your general performance in nursing school that you probably didn't consider. I always tell nursing students that as well as studying and learning you also need to treat nursing school as if it were a job. The reason is this. Your instructors are going to be watching, observing and forming an opinion about you every day. When you go out into the world after you graduate and get your licenses, the only people that have any kind of knowledge of what your performance is likely to be like as nurses is going to be all those clinical instructors who were watching and observing you during your time in school. And, most employers know this and depend upon their opinion. Most potential employers will want at least one reference from a school instructor. In today's world, many school's, like most businesses, compile the evaluations made about each of you by the instructors into one document that they will release to prospective employers. Some of the things employers are looking for in an employee don't exactly coincide with what you think a good nurse should be at this point in your new career. While you might be interested in just learning the basic mechanics of being a nurse, an employer might be more interested in things like:
Initiative - Autonomy
Dynamism - Energy
Positive attitude
Responsibility
Orientation to the client and co-workers (ability to provide customer service)
Learning capacity
Productivity
Adaptability - Flexibility
Leadership
Team work
Tolerance to pressure
Analytic ability
Professional development
Attendance
This is a great post. One more topic our instructors, especially the Nursing Program Director, have been hammering into our heads:
Punctuality and Attendance
Being in class, and being on time, are good work ethic habits to develop and both matter to potential employers.
Whooo Hooooo!!!! Got my authorization to test last night in an email from Pearson Vue! Now I'm going to make an appointment to take the NCLEX test as soon as I figure out where I'm going to take it and when.
Funny thing, no one else in my class that I'm aware of has gotten theirs yet. Emailed my fellow students and got some emails and phone calls back, so I imagine they will get theirs sometime in the next couple of days.
It was a long wait, made longer by the anxiety to get it over with and the need to have a job. Plus, now I am really nervous about passing the test. LOL, be careful what you wish for!
My family will be glad, at least they won't have to listen to me complain about waiting for the authorization.
After you graduate, material is sent to the Board of Nursing (BON), and they in turn send you an ATT letter. After that, you need to schedule an appointment with Pearson Vue to take the NCLEX exam.
tiggerdagibit
181 Posts
After reading half the replies, I realized this was an old post.. lol, but I'm so glad you came back and updated! I really enjoyed reading about your days. I don't know if you blog, but I think you would be great at it! Congrats on graduating and good luck on the NCLEX!!