Lpn-rn advice

[kaigo]

I am a LPN working in an internal medicine clinic. I am looking into finishing my RN in the near future. I am currently taking some of the new prerequisites that are required for the LPN-RN program. However, I won't be able to start the program for another year and a half due to the wait list, and even then there is no guarantee unless someone from the first year fails out. My problem is that my husband and I are also wanting to start a family and I would ideally like to stay home with my kids until they are in school. I feel like it is important to finish my RN, but I don't know if it is better to do it now, before I have kids, or after they are a little older and I am ready to focus on my career more. I have been given lots of different advice from the RN's I work with. My concern is that I will finish my RN and then step out of nursing for a while to focus on my family. I'm afraid during that time I would lose my skills and need to take a refresher course before entering the field again. I don't know if it would just be better to finish my RN when I decide to start working again full-time, or now, even though I may not be using it full-time. Any advice would be appreciated.

[Nascar nurse, ASN, RN]

My $.02 worth... things only get harder once you have kids. If you have the time now, do it now! Maybe you can work a wkend shift here and there once finished or just take the refresher course when you're ready to go back.

[APBT mom, LPN, RN]

I don't have any kids but a girl that I worked with was in the same position as you with wanting to start a family or finish school. She picked having a family and 9 years and 2 kids later she now has no time to go back to school.

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

I have been a nurse for over 30 years. I have seen a lot of changes occur over that 30 year period. It was hard for a nurse to come back into hospital nursing after being out of the field for 5 years or more and it's just as difficult now. The reason is because the technology and treatments are changing all the time. So, from my viewpoint and experience, I would say that it doesn't matter whether when you decide to step out of nursing to attend to your family now or later. You are going to have some difficulty coming back into the profession once you've been out of it for several years whether you come back. Most hospitals, from what I've seen want nurses who have been out of practice for a number of years to have taken a recent refresher course or they won't hire them. If you are out of nursing and come back in by way of completing an RN program you shouldn't have any problem getting hired as a new graduate RN along with the other students.

As far as when to do your RN training. That is up to you. Once you have it under your belt and you have your RN license, it is yours. However, I've noticed that a couple of states have made the renewal of an RN license dependent on being actively working in the field. In other words, if you aren't actively employed as an RN within a specific length of time, they won't allow you to retain an active license. You might want to check your state nursing law to see if your state is one of them.

I have no information on how difficult it might be to get into RN programs in the future. I can tell you that some schools are very picky about those science pre-requisites being taken within a certain time period, so you might want to check on that. As an RN who went back to school to get my BSN, I had to re-take Anatomy & Physiology and Chemistry classes because it had been more than 10 years since I had taken them. It was a school requirement of the BSN program and I had to do it in order to get accepted into the BSN program.

[fayejum48]

I think you should go ahead and work on your career first! You can work what is called prn work. Here in NC at the hospital I work at you can work 24 hours out of a six week period. That way you can keep up with your skills. Good Luck!