What a shame that thousands of prospective nursing students are routinely turned away from California nursing programs, especially with our state suffering a severe nursing shortage. Recently, the governor signed legislation mandating that nursing schools in the state allow LPN-Licensed-Vocational-Nurse-LVN/">licensed vocational nurses to become registered nurses with just one to two years of additional training. Now, through the use of these LPN-Licensed-Vocational-Nurse-LVN/">LVN to RN bridge programs, most LNVs can become registered nurses in three years.
Currently, all RN programs are severely impacted, with waiting lists of up to three or four years. Moreover, the programs require potential candidates to successfully complete numerous prerequisites, including chemistry, physiology, anatomy, microbiology and psychology. Most programs also require students to present a certified nursing assistant certificate. In addition, most of the prerequisites require other prerequisites.
Obviously, it is difficult to get accepted into a nursing program. With prerequisites and the waiting lists, it takes an average student six to seven years to become a registered nurse with an associate's degree. As a result, many qualified, potential registered nurses fall by the wayside. Additionally, nursing school is a lot like boot camp, in that students who fall below 75 percent on exams and those who do not exhibit professional behaviors may be "weeded out" from a program that they worked so hard to get into, instead of being mentored for success.
Admission requirements for most LVN programs dictate that the applicant is a minimum of 17 years of age and holds a high school diploma or equivalency (e.g. a GED), and are reasonably representative of what is required by programs in other states. The next step in becoming an LVN is earning your vocational nursing license. Becoming licensed requires you to successfully pass a standardized evaluation called the NCLEX-PN, which is a multiple-choice test designed to confirm your knowledge of the following four things:
Effective and safe care environment, Health promotion and maintenance, Fundamentals of psychosocial integrity, Physiological integrity. Just How Much Do LVNs Make? As with any other profession, LVNs have a wide pay scale influenced by various factors but the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics did report in 2011 that the average annual salary for the occupation ranges from $28,912 to $55,120. This range in salary is influenced by such variables as which area of the state the LVN works in, the kind of medical facility where she or he is employed, the individual's amount of work experience.
As an educator of vocational nursing students, I have a renewed appreciation for the magnitude of education required to obtain a license. It encompasses more than 900 hours of clinical training and 600 hours of theory lecture. Thanks to bridge programs, those hundreds of students who received rejection letters from RN programs, no longer need to wait six or more years to start a career in nursing. Clearly, LVNs can help ease the nursing shortage by being utilized to their full scope of practice. Moreover, LVNs can escape the long waiting lists and most prerequisites required for entrance into RN programs.
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