RPN: Nursing Home Or Hospital?

loriangel14, RN · Jan 7, 2005

I am a rpn student(grad 2007) as well and I know some rpn's personally.I asked them the same type of question and they had a variety of answers. One did work in a hospital (med-surg floor) right away and one other worked in a doctors office. Two worked in ltc but one left and is community nursing now. Hope this helps.

By the way, where do you go to school? I go to Georgian College. :rolleyes:

Tashia · Jan 7, 2005

Thanks for that info.

I havn't started yet , hopefully I start this Feburary, at Conestoga College. It's that waitlisted thing!! I'm just trying to gather some information. Where is Georgian College? What difficulties, surprisies, have you found? :rolleyes:

loriangel14, RN · Jan 8, 2005

Georgian has a main campus in Barrie and other ones in Orillia, Owen Sound, Parry Sound and Orangeville ( thats where I am going). I don't know about the full time programs but the pt one I am in definitely had no waiting list! It almost didn't run because they didn't know if they had enough people. lol But maybe the full time ones are different with the younger girls just getting out of high school looking( I am 39). They are currently preparing to run another one this fall.

I am really enjoying it. Not too many surprises because I didn't really know what to expect. Anatomy and Pysiology was easier than I expected and everyone that I know that is a nurse kept telling me that if I could pass it I was going to be ok. The main thing I can tell you is to pay attention in class and do the assigned reading. You would not believe how many girls in my class do not do those two simple things.

There is a lot of group work in our program and if you are nervous about getting up and doing presentations you will get over that, they will see to that! lol A lot of the things you take will seem like a waste of time but eventually you will see how it all comes together. The things that seemed not related to nursing butm served as aknowledge base for what comes later.

What Conestoga campus are you going to? I took my PSW at the Guelph one.

Tashia · Jan 8, 2005

Oh no! Presentations?!!

I will be going to the Doon Campus.

When I first applied they said if I gave them my marks for the prereq's I wouldn't be waitlisted. So I gave them it. Later I received a letter in the mail saying that they still havn't received my marks. I called and they said they did and that I wasn't wailisted. Then I receive a letter in the mail saying I am. UH! So right now I am going to wait and see what happens. They obviously don't have their files straight and with the holidays everything was put on hold.

I'm just crossing my fingers.

You said your doing your course part time? How long will it take you to finish?

Thanks for all the information. I've been trying to find out on the internet where RPNS could actually work and I just couldn't find anything. Actually last night I found an article that stated.......

"There is a Registered Nurse (RN) shortage in our Ontario hospitals today. However, this is not the crisis the media may portray it as. There are many Registered Practical Nurses (RPN) working and available to work in Ontario. The crisis is that too often RPNs are not being allowed to work in the entire hospital or to work within their full scope of practice. The crisis is that RPNs have been pushed out of some Ontario hospital units (for example, mother-baby units). The crisis in Ontario hospitals is this waste of RPN nursing resources. RPNs are skilled nurses and their training and nursing resources are being wasted"

I thought that was quite interesting....

loriangel14, RN · Jan 8, 2005

Our teacher has addressed the issue of rpn's getting shoved out of some positions. The only problem is that the institutions that are trying to fill certain positions with RNs only are having a lot of staffing problems because there aren't enough RN's to fill the positions. As well in the next 5 or 6 years or so there are going to be a lot of nurses reaching retirement age and also many are taking early retirement because of burnout and injury due to increased work loads.

I don't know how right she is but this is what she has said.

Yes presentations! And lots of essays. We did a lot of group work in class and I understand that is true at most colleges as far as the rpn classes go. We did a lot of things where the teacher would get everyone into groups and give you an assignment and about 20-30 min to do get it ready and then everyone would do theirs. Obviously these were short and they weren't marking you on how well you presented but it got you up there facing people. Further into the course you will have long-term group projects that will include presentations and you WILL be marked on how well you present. I have also ahd to do a couple on my own. You will have to learn how to do health teaching to patients so that is why they want you to learn public speaking. I was terrified at first but now its not so bad.

It is going to take me 3yrs and 9 mths to finish my rpn. I will be done in Aug. 2007. That includes the 12 week placement at the end. 37.5 hrs/week.

It can be frustrating dealing with the colleges. The Orangeville campus will give everyone a different answer to the same question regarding the course. Or they will give you an answer and then insist that they never said that. AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

Good Luck and don't hesitate to ask if you have more questions.

loriangel14, RN · Jan 8, 2005

P.S. If you go to medhunter.com they have job listings.

Tashia · Jan 19, 2005

:rolleyes: just wondering if anyone else has any suggestions, horrors, suprises that they've experienced going through the rpn course.

oh, also... does any one know of any websites that i could look at to help me prepare ie. human anatomy?

thanks for your help :) :)