Licensed Practical Nurse
Definition: A Licensed Practical Nurse, or LPN, is a healthcare professional. It wasn’t until 1955, that LPNs were officially recognized in all 50 states. LPNs are responsible for basic patient care such as monitoring patient status, filing medical records, and managing basic care.
How do I get there?
To become a Licensed Practical Nurse you must:
Obtain your High School Diploma / GED
Complete a training course
Pass the NCLEX-PN ( National Council Licensure Examination for Practical Nurses )
This career is one of the faster educational pathways toward a profession in the nursing field. Excluding the time it takes to get your High School Diploma / GED, this pathway takes about one year to complete. The training course is around a year long, then the student must pass the examination.
The laws behind using your license in different states may vary. Some states are a part of the NLC, an agreement that says nurses can work in different states without obtaining an additional license. However, some states aren’t a part of this agreement, so it’s essential to do your research on the laws of your state if you are considering getting your license in one state and then moving to another.
Let’s talk about locations
LPNs can work in many different locations in and out of the hospital, some of which include:
Nursing homes
Hospitals
Physicians offices
Rehab facilities
Schools
Outpatient surgery center
Insurance companies
This is only a short list of locations that LPNs can work at but there are many more.
But what do they do?
According to the Cleveland Clinic (professional, “Licensed Practical Nurse”), Licensed Practical Nurses provide basic medical care. Depending on the state’s laws, some LPNs can only perform certain tasks under the order of a physician or an RN.
Some tasks that Licensed Practical Nurses do include:
Monitoring patient’s vitals such as checking their blood pressure.
Changing bandages
Inserting catheters
administer some medication
basic comfort care
reporting health status to physicians and/or RN
Communication with the patient and family members
Interview
To fully understand the scope of this profession and the hard work that goes into it every day, we decided to interview a Licensed Practical Nurse in person. The interviewee Wendy Trippe is a secondary school nurse, today she will talk to us about the different experiences in her day-to-day life as a school nurse and the steps she took to become an LPN, along with a few other differences in their responses to various questions.
This interview was recorded, and minimal grammatical corrections were made to keep the responses as authentic to the original as possible.
Interviewee: Wendy Trippe
The first question we asked Ms.Trippe was what degree she had in her profession, she said:
“An LPN.”
Then we asked what inspired her to pursue this profession and she said:
“I've always wanted you to be a nurse because I've always wanted to help people as a young child and then um I just wanted to always help people and nursing was a good place to do that. And I've always enjoyed working with students.”
Next, we asked what a typical day-to-day looked like for her, and she said:
“ A typical day there is no typical day. The most normal days in the middle of the day I give a lot of medications around lunch time and we see a lot of do see a couple of diabetics. But it's it can be busy, it cannot be busy, a lot of headaches, stomach aches. It depends on the season. Spring's coming, so I'll see a lot of injuries, I feel like.”
After those questions, we moved into the education portion of the interview. Her next question was, What level of education or training was required for the profession?
“You can be an LPN or an RN. Most of the nurses that are in the school system are they have a bachelor's in RN. But I have been here since the program first started, so that's why I was but we still have a couple other LPNs that are in the program, but mostly there RNs.”
Next, we asked her specifically about certifications: Were any certifications required outside of a degree to become an athletic trainer? She responded:
“No.”
Quickly after we asked Ms.Trippe what advice she had for other students wanting to pursue this career, and she said:
“ Try to take a pathway (at school), the pathway that is at your school offers. The nursing program. um also try to work in any health care that you can, um the hospital like Wellstar has a program that you can go in and work. try to just be around it as much as you can.”
The final section of questions focused on career growth. Her first question in this section was, "How do you handle work-life balance?" She answered:
“ Actually, it's not a bad job because my job mainly is seeing students, so when I go home, it's not like the teachers, I have all the paperwork to grade and stuff. Now, sometimes if it's been a hard day and I've had a couple cases that are hard, it it's emotionally hard going home. But it's actually not a bad job, don't you think?( Talking to a float nurse in the room ) as far as work balance, it's Yeah ( the float nurse said ), the hours are really good. And we get off early, so it least be plenty of time to do stuff.”
Next, we asked, how her profession has evolved over the years. She said:
“ Oh, wow. I think well, I think back to when I was a nursing school and when I first graduated, we used to have to wear nursing caps and um these really starchy uniforms and now they're scrubs and it's it's more laid back. I just feel like there's more opportunities now than there's ever been.”
Then we asked, Are there any emerging trends or technologies that is shaping your field in athletic training? She stated:
“Always. It's always evolving, ever changing. But at school where we don't have as much that we can do here because we're just kind of like an assessment tool. So, but yes, it's always changing.”
Our final question for Ms.Trippe was a fun one. We asked, What is the biggest misconception about your field? She answered:
“I think that we just sit in here that we sit in here and don't do anything and um that we're on our phones and it's like, no, that's I think that's it. Like, because sometimes people ask us like, what do you do all day? But there's always something to do, like, catching up on, you know, computer work, I have paperwork and always and it helps too. I have a float nurse that's here a couple of days a week. and so it helps me that I can free up and do some stuff that I'm not able to do and I'm only one here seeing students”.
Interviewing Wendy Trippe was a very insightful experience, and we learned a lot of new information while interviewing that we were happy to share. What was your favorite response from Ms. Trippe's interview? Let us know in the comments.
Work Cited
“Nursing Licensure by State.” CORP-MSN0 (NLM), 16 Mar. 2022, https://nursinglicensemap.com/states/.
“How to Become a Licensed Practical Nurse.” ANA, 6 Feb. 2024, https://www.nursingworld.org/content-hub/resources/becoming-a-nurse/how-to-become-a-licensed-practical-nurse/.
---. “Licensed Practical Nurse.” Cleveland Clinic, 7 Dec. 2022, https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/24503-licensed-practical-nurse-lpn.
