Nurses (LPNs or RNs of any level) can give injections, draw blood, and start IVs. It takes an RN to do some things, like starting blood transfusions. I stick needles in people all the time.
Well, crap. I was trying to be all supportive an’ shit, and now you went and shot that all to hell. 
Guess I’m down to crossing my fingers and thinking good thoughts. Hope you get something figured out and it works out for you. If it helps at all, I still think what experience you do have gives you an edge over someone coming in off the street - if you decide to go back.
A public school kid should not learn high school work and high school is no place to learn college or university work.If kid ask question that at college or university level the teacher should not answer it.It like me asking how to fix car engine with out knowing the basic what car engine does and basic parts of car or asking how NASA space rocket knows how to go from one point in space to other point in space with out understanding the navigation system and how that works.
Also schools should spend more time on preparing you for the adult world and less time learning math and science you will never use.
I appreciate the support! I have found that, even though I haven’t used much in the way of Official Nursing Skills in a while, I learned a lot about how to think and assess situations. That’s something I use all the time. The technical stuff has all changes by now anyway. Does anybody write in a chart any more?
When did this start 5 years ago or 10 years ago? Is it like this in Canada and the UK too?
Some people like the science and understanding of biology and medicine but don’t like working with people or very old and very young that needs almost mothers touch and heart. May be lab work or back room is better option for these type of people
Nothing new about it. What do you think nurses do? For that matter, are you aware of the existence of phlebotomists?
I thought there are three levels of nurses.
- nurse assisted
- RN
-Advance nurse.
The nurse assisted feed you ,take you to bathroom ,help you in and out of bed , change bedding , take you to rehab or for walk.
The nurse give you meds , check your heart ,blood pressure ,read the medical equipment , monitor you and make sure you are okay and report to doctor if their are changes to your health.
The advance nurse will give injections, draw blood, and start IVs or some tests ER or put in catheters.
I keep starting a post to explain the different levels and what they do, but I really don’t have the right kind of experience to explain it properly. I hope another nurse will jump in.
Personally, as an LPN (the lowest level of nurse), I have done catheters, blood draws, IVs, tube feedings, tracheostomy care, and wound care, etc. My current job involves a lot of sticking big needles into people.
Okay so you LPN.
This may explain more on wikipedia on what is LPN and what they do.
*
**
Licensed practical nurse (LPN) is the term used in much of the United States and most Canadian provinces to refer to a nurse who cares for “people who are sick, injured, convalescent, or disabled under the direction of registered nurses and physicians”
A person can generally become an LPN with one year of training.
According to the 2010–2011 Occupational Outlook Handbook published by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, licensed practical nurses care for patients in many ways:
Often, they provide basic bedside care. Many LPNs measure and record patients' vital signs such as weight, height, temperature, blood pressure, pulse, and respiratory rate. They also prepare and give injections and enemas, monitor catheters, dress wounds, and give alcohol rubs and massages. To help keep patients comfortable, they assist with bathing, dressing, and personal hygiene, moving in bed, standing, and walking. They might also feed patients who need help eating. Experienced LPNs may supervise nursing assistants and aides, and other LPNs.
As part of their work, LPNs collect samples for testing, perform routine laboratory tests, and record food and fluid intake and output. They clean and monitor medical equipment. Sometimes, they help physicians and registered nurses perform tests and procedures. Some LPNs help to deliver, care for, and feed infants.
LPNs also monitor their patients and report adverse reactions to medications or treatments. LPNs gather information from patients, including their health history and how they are currently feeling. They may use this information to complete insurance forms, pre-authorizations, and referrals, and they share information with registered nurses and doctors to help determine the best course of care for a patient. LPNs often teach family members how to care for a relative or teach patients about good health habits.[1]
CNA: Certified Nursing Assistant. Most states do not require a license to be a CNA, although many keep a registry of CNAs. A CNA will give bed baths, change your sheets, bring you water, help you to the bathroom and provide other comfort care, like fluffing pillows (is if they have time for that!) and getting you an extra blanket. In many hospitals, the CNAs also take your vital signs every few hours (temperature, blood pressure, pulse) and sometimes blood sugars near meal times. Education varies, but is usually a 6 month to one year program of study. They do learn quite a bit of medical stuff, like anatomy and physiology, basic medical terminology, some very limited assessment skills. A CNA needs to be able to recognize a medical emergency or urgency, but is not expected to have the professional ability to do anything about it. His/her job is to Get The Nurse if anything is alarming.
LPN: Licensed Practical Nurse. An LPN holds a license from the state. An LPN can do everything a CNA can, plus he can do full nursing assessments and make nursing diagnoses and chart as a “Nurse”. He can give many medications by injection - but not all. He can perform many bedside procedures like suctioning, wound dressing changes, etc. - but not all. States vary a lot on what’s in the scope of practice of an LPN. In some places, they can give many IV medications, but not narcotics. An LPN is expected some level of professional critical thinking and handling tricky situations, but he is not expected to handle very complicated patients. LPNs are going the way of the dodo; many schools don’t even have LPN programs any more. I believe they were 1 year programs when they were in their heyday, but I’m not sure.
RN: Registered Nurse. An RN holds a license from the state. Can do everything a CNA and LPN can do, and they can also give almost all medications by oral, anal, vaginal, nasal, inhaled, injected or intravenous routes. Can do sterile bedside procedures, like wound care. Manage chest tubes and drains and multiple IVs at once. RNs handle the most critical patients and the ones with complicated comorbidities. RNs can do complicated skilled observation and assessment and make nursing diagnoses for charting and creating a plan of care for the patient. RNs take on management and leadership roles in their unit. RNs are expected to use advanced professional judgement on when, how and why to implement “standing orders”, such as choosing appropriate wound dressings or IV starts before the physician can write orders specific to the patient. Some states require a bachelor’s Degree in order to take the RN exam. Others allow both Bachelor’s Degree and Associate Degrees, or, rarely these days but still on the books, Diplomate Certificates, to sit for the exam. Everyone requires the passing of a rigorous exam to be licensed.
APN: Advanced Practice Nurse. An APN is licensed by the state. Can do everything a CNA, LPN and RN can do and can make medical diagnoses, prescribe many medications - but not all. Can do many bedside and office procedures, like simple surgery - but not all. APNs have at least a Master’s Degree, and have used that Master’s Degree to study a specialty. That specialty might be Family Practice, or Midwifery, or Pediatrics or Neonatology or any of a number of other specialties. The APN works “under the supervision” of an MD, but in reality there’s a wide variation for what this “supervision” consists of. Often it’s nothing more than a weekly phone call and signing faxed orders. But if an APN finds herself faced with a case that’s too complicated for her training, the MD will assume responsibility for that person’s care.
So if I understand they are phasing out LPN than.
In the future it just be CNA ,RN and APN than.
So the start of the thread was just how one get RN in past it was Diplomate Certificates now they want it to be Bachelor’s Degree .
Both the Diplomate Certificates or Bachelor’s Degree is the same 4 years of school it just one is Diplomate Certificates and other is Bachelor’s Degree .
But they will be doing same work it just they will have Bachelor’s Degree .
No, I don’t think you understand.
They are unofficially phasing out LPNs by just not hiring them, but not for any reasons that have anything to do with the Bachelor’s Degree thing. LPNs being phased out is a whole separate topic.
All states require you to pass a test to get your RN license. Some states require a Bachelor’s before you can take that test. Other will let you take the test with a Bachelor’s OR an Associate Degree*. There has been talk in my state for 20 years that they’re going to change in Illinois so you have to have a Bachelor’s Degree to take the test to get your RN license, but it hasn’t happened yet (that I know of).
Looks like there’s a similar push in Canada, to change the requirements so that new nurses (not those who already hold a license) need a Bachelor’s Degree. I’m not surprised in the least.
Do Bachelor’s Degree RN’s and Associate Degree RN’s do the same work? Is that your question? The answer is yes, we hold identical licenses with identical scope of practice, rights and responsibilities and we answer to the same nursing board. So yes, we do the same work. But that work is quite different from what you thought it was.
*I’m sorry I brought up Diploma nurses, but I was trying to be thorough. Used to be once upon a time you could learn to be a nurse through a program of study at a hospital. Rather than a school which would give you a degree, the hospital would give you a Diploma at the end of your training. That Diploma is one way you can meet the requirements to sit the test for an RN license. But there aren’t many hospital based Diploma Nursing programs left in the US. Not sure about Canada.
What I’m confused about is I think in Canada you have college and university where one goes to college you can take diploma or certification where university in Canada are more for people who want to get Bachelor’s Degree , Master or PHD.
Normy if one wants to get Bachelor’s Degree or Degree like computer science Degree , Bachelor computer security , philosophy you have to take other subjects , like if one takes philosophy you may have to take women studies and political studies.
So poster above said would a Bachelor Degree be more science learning or more medical learning? Would it help? Would one be talking lot of math , taking evolution , chemistry and physics so on?
Why ? because diploma or certification are more focus driven where Bachelor are more broad knowledge. It like one goes to university taking computers you take bit programming , bit hardware and bit software .Where diploma or certification in computers are more focus driven you take hardware you know that and noting else.
Unless this some kind of medical school Bachelor’s Degree that is different.
Also what is confusing is some college in the US or UK are college university combo schools where in Canada they don’t have that.
You cannot get Bachelor’s Degree , Master or PHD in college in Canada but in US and UK you can.
I know this is very confusing.
Generally speaking college and university are used interchangeably is the US. Colleges tend to only have undergrad degrees (Bachelors) and university’s will have undergrad and grad (masters or doctoral level). Undergrad degrees almost always include liberal arts ourselves work (history, philosophy etc) in addition to major coursework.
Pfsh, you do not need to know much about infernal combustion engines to be able to repair them, the old Chiltons manuals had trouble shooting checklists so that almost anybody could figure out what was wrong with the engine and repair it. Of course that was pre everything is electronic and computerized cars. Heck, we could bypass almost the entire electrical system on my scout and drive [we had a brown box with a pair of clamps on wires coming out one side, a simple toggle on the box, and another lead that hooked up to the distributor cap. Attach everything, turn the ignition on and flip the switch.] More than once I was able to work on various cars without really knowing jack shit about engines by simply following the troubleshooting guides step by step. Hell, I even rebuilt an engine using a chiltons once.
And any education is never wasted.
Your best bet is probably to visit the websites of schools in your area and look at the program listings. They often give you the names and/or course descriptions online.
Like the one I showed at UF. The nursing degree is very specific in its scope, certainly more than for other bachelor degrees. The level of sciences they take is basic, as an introduction to the human anatomy and physiology classes and other nursing classes that they will take. They are not required to take many of the courses other science majors DO have to take.
Here is another curriculum, this time from Louisiana.
If you’re concerned about the “humanities” electives, note that they can be in languages or economics or finances.
My state is also considering eliminating the 2 year ADN and requiring a 4 year BSN nursing degree. Currently we have 1 year LVNs, 2 year RNs, 4 year RNs, and then a variety of higher and related degrees all the way up to Doctorates in Nursing.
There have been rumors of this increased educational requirement for years, and it’s not actually the state or government that is pressuring making the move, but the employers.
For example, my employer (a hospital) wants to achieve a special certification that requires 80% of the nursing staff to have a BSN. They have set their target date as 2016.
Many of my co-workers with an ADN are looking at returning to school for transition RN to BSN programs right now. It looks like the transition programs run about 12-13 months although you see them advertised for less- especially from the for profit colleges. (The short coursework advertised seems just to be a marketing gimmick as far as I can tell.)
The for-profit colleges are charging about $27,000 (or approx $580.00 per semester hour) for the transition programs.
The traditional colleges are charging about $9,000 (approx $275.00 per semester hour).
Some of my coworkers are choosing the for-profits, despite the sticker shock, because they are convenient. Classes start every 6-8 weeks, can be done exclusively from home, and assignments are given in 1 week chunks for the student to work on as time allows during the week. People working full-time find this very convenient.
I’ve had the great luck not to need much medical care in my life, but have spent lots of time in hospitals with family and friends. ER nurses, icu nurses, neonatal, surgical nurses are almost all brilliant people. On the other hand the nurses providing most of the day to day care for patients are too often ignorant, incompetent, overworked, and underpaid. Injury and death from staff errors is way too high. If you have a loved one going into the hospital be prepared to have someone who cares about them present as close to 24/7 as possible. Hard to believe the hospital cartel will accept the expense of all those degreed caregivers.
According to Mom instead of paying tuition student nurses actually earned a (small) salary from the hospital, that may have even included room & board.