Why the Prejudice against LPNs

Nurses LPN/LVN

Published

I am an LPN and due to health reasons I have to give up RN transition hopefully for a short time. I fail to understand why RNs and LPNs can't work together without the bickering.I know that med techs and uaps are being used in hospitals in my area and I had a particularly bad experience with a med tech, she had 4 weeks experience and she was going to change my IV, I demanded a nurse,I refused to let her touch the IV. I hear that RNs are refusing to work with LPNs who have training and did sit for the state boards,are licensed as such when med techs and uaps have as little as 4 weeks training.I feel that it is not a lack of intelligence but opportunity that many of us are LPNs.I would prefer to work with nurses that have skills and not leave something as important as an IV to someone who flipped hambergers before changing IVs.

You must be working in the wrong place! LPN's are great and I feel they are very under utilized. Any nurse who slam dunks LPN's, and nursing assistants, isn't much of a nurse or a person! We are currently expanding the role of LPN's at our hospital and most of those here are as capable of running a floor as any of the RN's (some more so!!!)

I am sorry that you have had bad experiences.

When I worked on the nursing floors, I depended heavily on the LPNs. In my viewpoint, a nurse is a nurse. Sometimes, administration downs LPNs and they don't offer them the same opportunities as RNs. The hospital I work at offers RNs the opportunity to do 'Clinical Ladders' for raises but does not offer the same to LPNs causing tension between us nurses. My hat goes off to anyone in the nursing profession. There are so many roadblocks standing in our way to patient care.

Ok the next thing I'm going to hear is that RN's and BSN's can perform procedures that MD's are responsible for. WHATEVER, the medical system we work in has been designed for a reason. If your a RN or BSN do your job. If your a LPN or CNA do your jobs. However, anyone who feels that they need to do someone elses job and you are NOT certified to do so put a lid on it. I can understand how it can be frustrating to feel you can do a job and yet not be allowed to do it because you are not certified. GOOD NEWS though, if you are as smart as you think you are, getting a RN or BSN should be no problem. The moral of the story is we all have our stations in life and until we take actions to change them we have no room to complain. It's like complaing about the government and not voting, the two just do not go together.

AMEN, Wildcat!!!!

DOUBLE AMEN!!!!!!!! ~~~~~~~~ I couldn't have said it better!

I'd work with Wildcat any day!!!

I to am an LPN and I understand that "blue" is angry, but this is old news RN's(some not all} will always try to keep LPN's down, its just there way of keeping thier jobs. With the Insurance companies killing RN positions across the board the RN's are forced to fight for thier jobs.

Mystic

Truth be know not as many people are becoming RN's. That is one reason that LPN's have become so popular, because they can preform the more remedial procedures. This coupled with managed health care cutting back on the university educated staff is the reason LPN's have become popular. This has happened with MD's as well as BSN's RN's. As far as being worried about an LPN taking my job I'm not. Federal and state regulations insure my job. I say this because the government has seen fit to require the level of education I have to perform certain medical procedures. Government being as it is the need for RN's will not change and LPN's will continue in their current role.

Wildcat-- correct me if I am wrong but you express yourself like "Managment"?? and although I can find disagreement or fault in your logic you can't say that at least some RN's go out of there way to make it tough on LPN's.

Mystic.

wildcat - wish I'd said it first!!!! I work with a number of LPNs who went that route because it was "fastest". Granted a few of them are very conscientous, caring nurses. But they simply DO NOT have the supporting education we recieve in RN programs. They are not able to tell me the rationale behind some of their interventions, they are very task oriented - often don't seem to have the "BIG PICTURE". I am currently in an RN-BSN completion program. I feel a lot of the information we are absorbing would have been wasted on me 7 years ago as I began my ADN program. Seven years ago I was offended when I was told that we, as ADN students were being prepared to be bedside nurses - not researchers, not administrators - by GOD!! my liscense was just as good as anyone else's!!!! I now feel differently. I am beginning to agree with the ANA - the entry level to "professional nursing" - the RN title should be a BSN. ADN programs should produce LPNs. I have shared this with LPNs I work with, and by and large, they agree. The new ADN's I work with are offended - just as I would have been 7 years ago. The only BSN I work with is a new grad who thinks she is God's gift to nursing.....many of us have news for her....

Wildcat, you're right on! I worked too hard for my ADN and my BSN to have it discounted by anyone. You can be the best LPN that you can be, but you will still not be an RN. Same goes for RNs, as much as you know and can do, you are not an MD. My mother is an LPN and she is the best she can be, I love and admire her for that (among other reasons). The LPNs I work with, who are competent in their own right, always receive respect from me and all the other RNs at our hospital. But so do the maintenence staff, housekeeping staff, doctors and admissions staff. What you do is up to you. If you are competent and have the right attitude, you will be successful and have respect!

Mystic~~~~~

Sounds like you think you are God's gift to nursing! What makes you think that you are a better nurse then those of us that have our ADN. I have just been hired on a ICU. They hired four new grads. Two ADN educated and two BSN educated. The two with their BSNs are terrible nurses. They probably won't even make it off of probation. Me and the other ADN nurse are already on our own doing the hardest assignments. ADN nurses get way more bedside experience in school and end the end make better nurses right out of school.

I think most LPN's understand that there is an educational (nursing) difference in LPN's and RN's. What's our complaint - RN's (some) feel that there is an intellectual difference also.An LPN is WHAT I am, not WHO I am. There are many duties that I cannot and should not do, but to treat me as if I were somehow in a class beneath you is wrong. I have alot to learn from some of the RN's where I work, about nursing, but intellectually I will stand toe to toe with any ADN, BSN, or MD for that matter.

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