How is the first semester in the LPN program?

Ltorres5351 · Feb 1, 2007

Are you in the miami area?:smiletea:

Loren2307 · Feb 1, 2007

I am finally done with my LPN program and working on my 120 hours and soon to take my boards. I can't wait to move on to the next level and start the RN program. My first semester was great and on my first day of clinical I about died. But I will never forget a second of it. I started with a 4.0 going into the program and I will be graduating with a 3.77. I was a long hard road and PRAISE GOD it is almost over. Goodluck to you!!! You will do great!!

nrshorn06 · Feb 1, 2007

I just graduated in December and am waiting to take the State Board Exam on the 23rd.... The BEST advice I can give you is to study EVERY DAY. NO MATTER WHAT...Study a little of something everyday. Read ahead if possible and make sure you know that A&P. You aren't taking the class but, it is a must to pass! Message me if you need to!! Liz

Ltorres5351 · Feb 2, 2007

thank you so much for your advice. i will keep you guys posted.

lizzy:smiletea:

pyseymo · Feb 3, 2007

I just finished my first week of school! It can be a bit overwhelming; we do about 4 chapters a day in various books and have a test on that material the next day. We will have one or two tests every day. I believe we have a very good instructor, she doesn't take herself too seriously, there's alot of participation from the class, she reviews every day before we take our tests, etc..

I was pleasantly surprised on the first day of school to walk in and find that the whole class is about the same age as me! Most of us are in our 30's; a couple of 50 year olds and one 19 year old. The gender breakdown is seven females and five males which I think it's great that so many guys are in class!

We start our clinicals in early March, and the majority of them are in two different hospitals which I find is ironic since most hospitals won't hire LPN's anymore! :confused:

trsa34 · Feb 3, 2007

Wow. Pyseymo, 4 chapters a day. We cover about two chapters per class a week. The instructors say that we need to store our info into long term memory and at that rate it would be too hard because doing 4 chapters in one day and testing the next day, would make me lose everything I learned the previous day. I love when the instructors are down to Earth and love what they do. It make everything easier for us. I wish my kids' teachers would be more like that. My oldest is in middle school and he comes home confused and frustrsted because he don't understand some of the work and his teacher don't want to take the time to explain it to him. My math instructor is wonderful. She shows me new things every class (we meet once a week) and I take home the info and show it to my son and he gets it. We don't start clinicals until mid April from the 16th thru the 26th. Then we break for about a week or two and come back for more. Anyways, good luck everybody.

Tina:smilecoffeecup:

jelorde37 · Feb 9, 2007

wow reading your guyspost remind me of when i went to nursing school, lol that was almost 2 years ago. i remember iwas nervous yet excited. on the first day of class, the teacherpiled up alot of homework. it was kinda hard to adjust to the homework load at first but once you do, your good. theory was easy cause i did some independant studying about human anatomy and physiology and deficits associated with the human body before lvn school. and clinicals were great cause you were the nurse for however many patients your assigned to by the teacher that day. i graduated in march of 06 with a B+ average on all terms(couldve been an A, but its a long story). all i gotto say is, good luck and even if you feel like giving up, just remember what your goal is, and that goal is to become a nurse. tell yourself that every single day, and when you do graduate and you are a nurse, have great pride in yourself and dont let people in other health care disciplines trample on you (i dont have anything against EMTs but they are assholes to nurses, i just dont know why =(

tricialynn78 · Feb 12, 2007

I just started LVN school in January, so only a few weeks in. So far things are going good. I must say that you have to stay on top and ahead of the game as much as possible. I am taking evening classes, so that I would avoid the daytime wait list. Class starts at 3 and ends at 10:30 or so. It is ALOT of information. I thought Pharmacology would be the hardest, but it seems foundations is kicking most of our butts. Guess cause we THINK it is so easy, alot of info gets looked over. I am also taking A&P so I have a total of 19 college credit hours I am taking. But it is going good, we have not lost anyone yet. Heck we only have 19 students in the class, hope we don't lose anyone. So in December, I will be walking the stage and starting my new life. Good Luck to you!

StocktonNurse, BSN, LVN, RN, EMT-B · Feb 12, 2007

Cool thread that you started bud. I have been in my LVN program since the second week of January and it has been going great!! To tell you all the truth, it has been really really easy. I already finished A&P, Micro, Nutrition, Human Development, and a bunch of prereqs for RN and LVN program so I was able to waive those classes for this program. But, I spent a whole month doing theory, and now I am in a Convalescent home practicing skills. I was kind of apprehensive going from the classroom to the actual clinical, but so for everything has been fair and fun. I have met alot of new people, made new friends, and learned a lot. Tomorrow's actually my final for Fundamentals, and I have not had a test grade under 95%. If you have been preparing to be in a nursing program like me, and waiting patiently to finally be in something, you will do just fine! I finally had my opportunity, and I am doing pretty good. Good luck.

postmortem_cowboy · Feb 12, 2007

Ok, my two cents... Howdy gang, I know how you all feel, those who are just starting LVN/LPN school, I commend you all, those just finishing up, keep on plugging your almost there. I wanted to share a few things with you guys, some of you may like it some not, but I figured nonetheless I'd share.

#1, no one will ever ask you what grade point average you had in nursing school when you interview for a job, insofar as if you hold the license, your a nurse. When you take boards, you may feel like you failed it, I know I did. If you hold the license, your a nurse, and when your first license comes in the mail, it's going to make all of your LVN/LPN school and what you had to suffer through all worth while.

I took the path less travelled. here in california, we have vocational schools where you can do your whole LVN in 12 calendar months. I don't know how it is for the rest of the states but here you can do it that way. Our first quarter, was mostly history of nursing, alot of medical terminology, and learning clinical skills, IM injections, SQ injections, foleys, digital disimpactions etc etc etc. Learn everything you can. The one thing you can't remember might be the one thing a patient needs you to know a couple of years down the line. You are starting a career that will keep you in school in one form or another, never stop learning, that's our job. When your in clinical, volunteer for that foley, volunteer for as much as you can. The more you do in school the better you'll be when your licensed. Case in point, my first shift as a fully licensed LVN, I hadn't ever given one single IM injection, I'd volunteered for many in school but they just weren't prominent where my clinical's were at. I must have given 15 of them my first night. DON'T BE SCARED!!!! If you know your stuff, and can rattle off what this or that med is for, and know what adverse reactions are and what expected side effects to look for... there's no need to be scared at all. Make up your med cards, DON'T CHEAT!! Alot of the people I did nursing school with paid other students to do their med cards for them, that's not the purpose for doing them, if you write them you'll retain some of the information, and if nothing else, you'll get familiar with the medications names and say oh yeah dig, that's a heart med, and then go look it up.

#2, and I'll bet you any of the other VN's/PN's here will attest to this, board questions are testing not only your knowledge, but your ability to sift through crap. Alot of the questions will have a bunch of totally irrelevant information, and one piece that pertains to the question asked at the end of the whole situation presented. Find the question that is being asked on every question first. We were taught this and it worked very well for all of us. If you can identify what the question being asked is, usually the answer is fairly apparent. Cut out or line out or disregard all the information that doesn't pertain to the question being asked. Then look at the answers, usually, there's going to be 2 answers that are totally wrong because they relate back to irrelevant information, and 2 that seem right. Another thing nursing school will test is your ability to RATIONALIZE!! If there are two answers that seem correct, you know there's only one right answer. Ask yourself this question, why why why? it will serve you well by doing so, if you can narrow it down to two answers, and answer the "why why why" for both questions and only one makes sense, then you've found your answer. This is known as working the question backwards, find the question in the situation provided, get rid of all non-pertinent information, rule out 2 answers that don't fit, and rationalize the correct answer.

I know you probably have a ton of books that were either issued to you or that were required for you to buy, however, there's one you should be using that'll help you out immensely. What is it that your ultimately trying to do, pass boards correct? There are literally tons of books out there that have mock board questions in them... get one. The best way to prepare for a cardiac exam, is to find one of these books that goes by system and use that to prepare for your exams. Do your studying, and then take a test exam on that particular system. It's what I did, and I faired pretty good on boards.

Pharmacology is usually a bear, learn groupings of meds, don't try and learn each different medication, you'll kill yourself trying to remember everything. meds can be grouped together, this group does this and 90% of them have this particular SE's, a good for instance are your heart meds, ACE inhibitors would be one group, all very similar, etc etc etc right on down the line.

Mark my words there will be days you feel trampled, and hit by a train. There will be days you go home and wonder why the hell did I do this to myself and what was I thinking. You will have days that clinical instructors will swamp you with patient care, and then expect you to come up with charting as well. You'll feel like there's no possible way you can do the job of a CNA and that of an LVN/LPN... and you'll be right, there is no way you can do both, but you'll be expected to at least try. Half of nursing school will teach you what your subordinates job is, so you can know when they are and aren't doing what they need to do, the other half is teaching you what you need to know as a clinically safe nurse. You should walk out of every single clinical day learning something new, if you don't, you weren't trying. Real nursing will be very similar but only "your job." There have been times i've taken a night shift and was supposed to split a 35 patient med/surg unit with another VN and that person just didn't bother to show up to shift, so guess who gets to do all the PO meds, all the prn's, all the accuchecks, and all the insulin's at 9pm, me. Those are the shifts you have to buckle down your bootstraps and enjoy the ride cuz it's coming. You'll have good days, you'll have bad days, but every day you'll learn something new, treasure that.

Above all, have fun with it. Learn as much as you can, expose yourself to every type of situation you can. Try to apply what you learn reading in a book to a patient. That usually will connect the dots so to speak.

Wayne.

jelorde37 · Feb 15, 2007

i agree totally with wayne. the stuff he talked about was stuff that i felt while i was in nursing school. also, the transition from student to nurse is kinda hard at first but hang in there.

postmortem_cowboy · Feb 15, 2007

Yes it is... very... there's no instructor for clinical to go to when you don't know the answer to something... but there's always another route to go, and you learn that with time.

I'd been nursing say a year, and I got two patients on a med/surg unit. One had gone in for a hip replacement, the surgeon had broken the head of the femur off, and didn't have the necessary stuff to fix it, so he figured, we'll close her up and when the stuff comes in to fix the femur, we'll open her back up and do the fix with the replacement at the same time. On final out count for the surgery, they came up a sponge short. So they had to open her back up, find the sponge and reclose her.

Long story short (too late) she'd been under anesthesia for over 10 hours, when I got her back on med/surg she had a PCA and was still groggy with me coming onto a night shift. I figured on first assessment, she was just still under a bit of the anesthetic and i'd keep checking on her to see if she was coming out of it... time... just give it a bit of time...

An hour later I figured ok, let's go check on her. I go in, still the same, I kept racking my brain as to what was going on... why why why is this person doing this... and I just couldn't figure it out. Go get the charge nurse, tell her, I know somethings wrong but I can't put my finger on it. She goes in, talks to her, still the same type of reaction still groggy. I missed one thing that would have given me my answer. No one can know everything!!! That's why there's a charge nurse... she/he is your resource when you get in a bind. Pupils... pupils would have told me the whole story, one was fixed and dilated, the other pinpoint. So you see it's learning things like that after you get licensed, that will burn into your brain forever. Now, the very first thing I look for in an altered patient is the pupils, it's easy to get side tracked and not remember your assessment skills. Especially when your running around trying to do this for this patient and that for another and they all seem to need the nurse all at the same time.

Wayne.