Pay Rate

You will find it wont make any difference whether you are bridging or not. They will pay you as a LPN with 4 years experience. After you finish your program and go to work for them as a RN you will be paid new grad wages (which by the way usually go up fairly fast the first year). Dont sweat dickering over higher LPN wages at this stage in the game, it just isnt worth it and IMO you would be wasting your time. They will probly tell you what you are learning in your RN program isnt going to help your LPN position anyway. A lot of those things are not being done by LPN's in the clinical setting per facility policy. So only after you finish your RN will you become a different category "asset" to them.

Dont mean to sound hard, im tired from 3 night shift. :)

I agree with the above, it won't matter until you finish your RN program. You will be offered the pay of an LPN with 4 years experience.

I might add to this also,, now since ive had a little sleep. You can always express what kind of skills you have that would be an asset to them. Sell yourself. That may give you a little higher pay on the LPN scale. If you have some skills that may be out of the ordinary for what they normally would expect a LPN with 4 years exp to have. Maybe something from a previous job that LPN's dont normally do in a facility, or a super proficiency on a particular computer program. Just dont go over your NPA compentancies. Remember you are a LPN not an RN yet so dont discuss or inject skills you may be learning as an RN student as things you are competant in.

Yes. I do believe that you should at least try to negotiate for a higher hourly pay rate. As an LPN for a number of years, you have actual hands-on experience that a new grad RN will not have. We've all worked with new grads both LPN and RN who were taught tons of theory but had very little actual experience and were not familiar with the hospital setting, patient care, organizational structure, policies, heirachy, etc. As an RN, I know that if RNs are interviewing and making the decisions, you may not get very far-it's a relationship that I've never understood, but it's still worth a try-if nothing else, you're saying that your experience has value and shouldn't be taken advantage of. I'd rather staff my unit with LPN to RNs rather than new RN grads. I'm sure you'll see a lot of disagreement about this-and that's okay.