Happy Dance-LPN Program

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I enjoy reading everyone's topics and debates and thought I'd add my little two cents in. I applied to TWO RN colleges and an LPN college and was accepted to all three! I will be starting as an LPN first (financial reasons, LPN school will essentially be free for me), and working my way to RN transition. They allow students with an active LPN here to enroll in the third semester of the RN program. I am feeling extremely blessed and lucky today and thought I'd share some good vibes!!

Yay! Congrats! It's definitely been a challenge but it will be worth it! Good luck to you too!! ;)

We lost another student this week. I really have no idea what went on, but after some snide remarks to the professor in the classroom, she gathered her books up, got in a loud conversation with the other professors and walked out. Haven't seen her again.

We started a new segment today, Nutrition. 3 chapters, 6 tests, no room for slacking or failure. Worried about a few of the grades I saw on the posted grade board, but I don't know who's they are nor do I have the ability or spare time to help. I'm doing ok keeping my head above water so far, getting to know who's who in the class, who will have your back and who will throw you in front of the bus, that kind of thing.

The new schedule came out as well (the program supervisor does them once a month about two weeks in advance of the new month), found out we have hospital orientation on the 6th of February and start clinicals after that on the 21st. I'm pretty nervous about that, but I think we'll do fine. That will have to be my update as I don't know much more yet. :wacky:

Thought I'd post an update though it has been a few months. We have been through a few more segments and are now in the LPN section of the program (the previous sections were basic hc worker). We gained a few students, lost a few more. We're on spring break now, but rumor has it when we come back we will have lost 3 more students. This brings our class down to about 24 from the original 34. We're in clinicals now and I love them, they really make the weeks go by fast. We're in class Tues and Wed, in clinicals M, Th, and Fri. Pretty happy with the program as a whole at this point. I've been voted President of our class so there's that too, I have no idea how to be a president.

I'm not the type of person who picks up on cattiness or general disdain towards us students (or in life in general-I stay pretty happy) and I have a naturally happy sarcastic attitude (I have been told I flirt a lot, actually I'm just trying to be friendly....this may be why people get the wrong idea sometimes though), so I'm definitely using these to my advantage with some of the seasoned nurses who are not pleased to have students on shift with them. I guess it never crossed my mind that others would not be interested in teaching or being shadowed, but I can see how extremely busy they are and I get that having to break in new 'volunteers' and answering numerous questions may (would) be annoying. Charting is something new and for now although we can log into the computers to look at admission dx and labs, we're not allowed to actually use them. We are doing full narrative handwritten charting. We get two patients a day, our charting is due at the end of our 'shift' at 11:30am. Post conference is from 11:30-12:45, then we're out for the day.

I have to say getting in there and just doing it, it's scary because we don't really know anything more than basic stuff. Right now we're mainly focusing on our vitals and H2T assessments, reporting anything 'unusual' to the RN, and charting everything. They want us to bathe the patients and change their bedding every day we are there. I've noticed more often than not the patients don't have the right fall precaution items on and on their door, even if they've been there for days. It's difficult knowing where our boundaries are still, what am I allowed to do, so you don't really want to step on the nurses' toes but you do want to help without being annoying.

All in all it's nice so far. We're in the last few chapters of A&P and the middle of Med Surg I in class. A&P has wiped a few people out, but Med Surg was a surprise attack I think, especially with the second chapter being nothing but IVs and tubing and solutions. Even those (like myself) that had all the prerequisites done for RN courses had not seen or heard of the tubing types, when to use what, why, and drip rates. Thank God we had a week to learn it, but some brushed it off which made the median class grade about a 60% on that one.

Not trying to use this as my personal diary...ok, yes I am kind of, but I thought maybe me posting every few weeks might help someone else out that was thinking of nursing school. The one hardest lesson I've learned so far is not to put a lot of faith in others. That seems harsh, but I've had a few friends I've gained through class that I really thought were going to stick with it but they put their personal pleasures first instead. You have to 'do you' first and not worry about anyone else, and when you're doing 2 chapters a night (reading, objectives, workbook) and testing on them the next day you barely have time to sit with your family at dinner. This has been hard for me coming from being a stay at home mom doing part time classes for prerequisites to doing full time classroom work all week and seeing my kids and husband maybe 2 hours a day. It's a bit easier now that we're in clinicals, but it's still a strict schedule and the homework requires discipline. That was not meant to scare potential students, just telling it like it is. Ok, well this has been long enough, I'll try to post again in a few weeks. We go to the class ahead of ours' graduation April 5th, so WE become the "Seniors." Exciting!

That is awesome. Congrats. Now you get to choose which one. Hopefully you make a solid choice and you can't go wrong either. I just graduated my LVN program and I plan on taking pre-reqs or re-taking them and hopefully bridge to RN then BSN.

I'm starting my program Mon and Your reminding me of myself all the ducks are in a row now just relax and get prepared for them to swim but stay focused and afloat. Your good to go I'm sure you'll do great!!!

So we're seniors now! It's been a few weeks more and we're all starting to feel the burnout, even myself-who was amped up fully at the first part of this school year. We can't do much more than the CNA's can (sometimes not even that much), and the restriction paired with the annoyance of the nurses & CNA's that have us on their shifts plus the differences we see in what should be done vs. what is actually done is wearing us down. There's also the classroom shift, we officially took over the senior's classroom as of this past week and although it feels good to move up to the 'new' room, it has us out of our element as well. On my team in particular we switched from doing a narrative charting form to a "Geriatric Assessment Form" which consists of VS, general bed-bound patient questions, and a huge chart on the back where we are supposed to list the patient's medications, what they are for, and their use in our patients. This requires a lot of down time with the charts as they are not always updated and we have to manually search through potentially years of written dr's orders to find medications. We're not allowed on the computers (that they keep UTD) at the nursing home, so this is what we have. It's long, takes time away from patient care, and it's nearly impossible to find a place to set down your chart and paper as there are limited seats available and we're not allowed to 'hang out' at the nurses' station. I get it, I get the whole reason for all of it, the no nurses' station thing, the having to write the medications, but it doesn't make it any less of a pain in the tookus. A few of the ladies in the class sit on benches and use their laps, however I'm a rather large woman with little lap room so that's not an option for me.

I can say that I know my forte is not in the LTC/SNF environment. I won't get into reasons, because they really don't matter, but ideally I would like to find a position that was not in this area of nursing (ideally meaning in a perfect world, I would be glad to work wherever I could in the real world). Thankfully tomorrow is my group's last day at the LTC facility we are at and we will be rotating back to the hospital again on a surgical floor. We are all ready.

As far as classroom goes, we're having a bit of sluggishness with getting the students to pony up some dough for graduation ceremony expenses (building cost, celebration banquet, awards, class plaque, class photographs). We asked each student pitch in $80 to cover all of these expenses, but only one student so far has come forward with anything. I'm looking into fundraising now, a good prospect has been with Yankee Candle Co., I believe we as a class could sell those easily and we get a good portion of the profits.

We lost 2 more students in the last 2 weeks simply due to hours, bringing our total down to 22. We have 30 hours allotted at the beginning of the year we are 'allowed' to miss, then by state law (Florida) you have to start the program over again. A lot of people unfortunately used their hours early through no fault of their own, usually due to sickness or death of family, but it's coming back to haunt them now. The director of the program will *usually* let them restart with the new class that has just come in, starting back in the segments they left off in, but it sets them back 6 months. You get one 'do over', if you don't make it then you have to restart the program entirely. We are sad to see people go because of hours.

I think that's actually all I have for now, have a Happy Easter everyone!

How are the prereqs going??

I'm starting my program Mon and Your reminding me of myself all the ducks are in a row now just relax and get prepared for them to swim but stay focused and afloat. Your good to go I'm sure you'll do great!!!

How do you like it so far thkh3?

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