Help.. LPN stuck in Dr office.

seneyka · Mar 1, 2008

Where I live in IN it seems none of the hospitals are hiring LPN's. Anyone else seeing this? When I went to school a little over 2 years ago they still were. Since then I have done LTC for 3 months (which was a very bad place) so I left and went to a doctor office setting (pediatrics). I have always wanted to work in a hospital setting, but it seems it won't happen. I want to go back for my RN, but I can't do it working 8-5 m-f. Plus the pay is awful. I don't have kids, I don't mind working holidays or weekends. I just want to advance. Hence why I want to get into a setting like a hospital. Any advice anyone can offer would be appreciated. :nuke:

One guy I knew who is a BSN, RN working in a hospital telling me that that hospital recently was letting LPNs go ( or firing them) and he did not understand why.

Now I graduated and got my license for over a month already and still no hospital calls me after I tried 10 applications!

Somewhere I read, hospitals replace LPNs with Medical Assistant (MA) because of limitted LPNs' functions and duty, and that they pay MA a lot cheaper!

Some of my classmates however got accepted jobs in hospital settings. Not me, I am dying to still look for a job in a hospital!

And some of my classmates accept jobs in LTC (long term care) and need to earn experience first for about a year, and then look for jobs in hospital!

pagandeva2000, LPN · Mar 2, 2008

Maybe I am mistaken, but I thought that for Excelsior that you had to work in either a hospital or skilled nursing setting because of the clinical hour aspect. I worked with an LPN doing Excelsior who had to get a job at a hospital because she worked at a dialysis center and that didn't meet the qualifications.

I had to do a report on LPN to RN transitioning in my last semester in school. I chose to investigate Excelsior. I didn't get that impression. It seemed to me that they wanted your license, and if you had college credits towards their cirriculum, a transcript. What they did say, is that their clinical would be for a weekend, and it would be focusing on LPN skills learned, such as dressings, IVs, and some other things. They did not seem to emphasize that one had to work in a particular work setting. I could be wrong, though, but I spoke to them several times to obtain the information I needed to add to my paper. They also told me that most people don't do well in clinical, because they performed their skills the same way they did at work (not fully observing aseptic technique...) .

kat7ap · Mar 2, 2008

Maybe I am mistaken, but I thought that for Excelsior that you had to work in either a hospital or skilled nursing setting because of the clinical hour aspect. I worked with an LPN doing Excelsior who had to get a job at a hospital because she worked at a dialysis center and that didn't meet the qualifications.

I was curious so I decided to research this... For my state (Washington), it is required for graduates of non traditional programs, such as Excelsior, to have an additional 200 clinical hours with an RN preceptor and it must be in an acute, subacute or skilled nursing setting. This must vary from state to state and I suppose you don't actually have to work in the place you get your clinical hours, but I'm sure it would be helpful. :nuke: