I was having a conversation with a friend of my (she's also an LVN) she was saying it's too easy to get your license now, well at least in Los Angeles. It got me to thinking about it so i went on the bvnpt website and i stopped counting at 200 VN programs, I didnt realize how many there were out here. My VN program was certainly NOT easy, 66 students on the first day, 12 of us made it through to graduation,10 of us are licensed. What do you guys think? Was it too easy? Did your school have alot of grads? Do you think there's too many VN programs in LA or in general? Just bored at work no pts, I guess their scared of the rain......
I graduated on 9-2-10 from an LA private school.
Licensed on 5-26-11:nurse:
Working at an urgent care since ive been licensed.
Im still in school right now and our program is anything but easy. We work very hard and spend a lot of time studying and doing assignments. I think the hardest part is the amount of material to cover in a short time. Its not even easy to get into a nursing program anymore let alone graduate.
I'm going to go against the grain and say that, yes, obtaining an LVN license is too easy these days. In fact, obtaining an RN license is too easy these days.
Other health professionals (physical therapist, dietician, speech language pathologist, pharmacist, occupational therapist, physician, etc.) have high barriers to entry of their respective professions, which prevents too many people from entering these careers. Therefore, plenty of jobs can still be found in the aforementioned professions because they are not flooded with too many people.
However, nursing does not have a high barrier to entry when compared to other health professions. A person can become an LVN/LPN in one year after passing an entrance exam or doing well in a few prerequisite courses. A person can become an RN in a little more than two years after passing an entrance exam and doing well in a handful of prerequisite courses. Since there are relatively few barriers to entering the nursing profession, many people have become nurses over the past few years, and local job markets are flooded with too many nurses competing for precious few jobs.
By the way, I completed an LVN program in the greater Los Angeles area back in 2005 and an RN completion program in the Midwest in 2010, so I know whereof I speak.
This and I whole heartedly agree. Since I graduated from PN school when dinos walked the earth I worked with tons of Diploma nurses and they rocked. Even my PN program was based on a Diploma RN program, I was at a CC and we had more clinical hours than the state's ADN and BSN programs at that time, only the Diploma RN programs had more clinical hours. Getting in was tough, we had to complete some pre-reqs...english, biology and a reading comprehension course prior to applying. In other words, they wanted to make sure you could read and write english at a competent level and had a basic understanding of life science.
After being out of nursing and the medical field for 20 years and now working as a Patient Sitter, I'm shocked at the lack of basics some of these new nurses have...lots of theory but very little hands on experience.
When I graduated everyone in my class passed the SBTPE on the first try, we were ready to preform the duties we had trained for, a few weeks orientation and off we'd go, yes our scope of practice was different then but we still came out ready to do our jobs we were hired for, just like the Diploma nurses.
Anne36, LPN
1,361 Posts
Im still in school right now and our program is anything but easy. We work very hard and spend a lot of time studying and doing assignments. I think the hardest part is the amount of material to cover in a short time. Its not even easy to get into a nursing program anymore let alone graduate.