Medical Training

The end of the Spring Module has come! The grades are in, and the summer break is starting! Here, at Gurnick Academy, we especially want our LVN students to succeed in their endeavor of obtaining quality education and experience on the way to successful careers. We, the Gurnick family, are very proud of our LVN program, because we wish success to all that enter it. If you have come to us, we meet you with open arms, and make sure, you get all the help on your way to a new beginning in your life, because we give education to all those who want an education in LVN nursing!

So, as usual, at the end of the module, we look back and sum up the successes of our nursing students. No one is left behind here. Even those, who need assistance in academic progress or have fallen behind on their studying or clinical hours, will be given chances to improve their grades to catch up with the rest of their classmates. It is like a family here: we care about all our students, and we sincerely want them to be successful in studies and in practice. This is why we have remediation procedures for the ones who had hard time in the past module, and need to catch up. No one is left behind, and we, Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts, are proud of this!

Even though students are on vacation, we are preparing for Module 4 that begins on July 6, 2010, and the admissions manager is continuing to enroll new students for the July 6th prerequisites class for VN and PT students.  Our new Radiologic Technology students continue with their ongoing program and new applicants continue to come and in and take the entrance exam and speak to our new financial manager, Camilia.  Our new Manager of Student Services, Gena, is awesome, catching on very quickly as to student life here at Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts.  She is always approachable and seems to be very happy to help anybody in any way.

Our new patient care simulators have arrived (METIman, the adult simulator; Noelle, an expectant mother; Hal, the infant she delivers, and 5 year old Hal, the pediatric simulator.)  All will be set up in the lab this week, with their computers.  The clinical coordinator is scheduling field trips and assigning students to satellite clinics such as Juvenile Justice Center in San Leandro.

We are setting up the HESI exams for the month for July for fundamentals (for Module 2 students) and medical surgical evaluation (for module 4 students.)  These exams do not count towards student grading, but enable the students to familiarize themselves with the HESI testing process.

We anticipate an exciting move to a new campus, larger and more suitable to our growing needs.  The LVN program director is continuing to work on our VN-RN bridge program.  We are also continuing the ongoing acquisition of new clinical sites to offer our students the most interesting clinical experiences in the area.

Have you heard about first lady Michelle Obama’s campaign Let’s Move to solve the epidemic of childhood obesity within a generation?  The Let’s Move website states, “…only a third of high school students get the recommended levels of physical activity.” According to the Centers for Disease and Prevention, “Aerobic activity should make up most of your child’s 60 or more minutes of physical activity each day. This can include either moderate-intensity aerobic activity, such as brisk walking, or vigorous-intensity activity, such as running [at least 3 times per week].”  One of the ways to make exercise a part of your life at any age is to sign up for the Active Lifestyle Program.

This program site is located at www.presidentschallenge.org and is a part of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition (PCFSN). The PCFSN’s mission is to engage, educate and empower all Americans across the lifespan to adopt a healthy lifestyle that includes both regular physical activity and good nutrition.  The Active Lifestyle Program can be a helpful tool for nurses, especially since the LVN / LPN already assists with setting realistic goals and encouraging fitness in their patient’s lifestyle plan.

Nursing students learn about the importance of movement at any age, including the curriculum taught in LPN programs.  Nursing schools, such as a LPN school addresses the concerns for physical movement with their patients to facilitate the body to heal and prevent further complications, such as blood clots and respiratory infections.  Check out www.letsmove.gov for more information about the importance of exercise and how to promote exercise toward a healthier life.

Happy Father’s Day to all Gurnick Academy dads and those who whish to be dads! This weekend all of us are celebrating the special day, when we appreciate the men that supported us no matter what, who helped us up, when we were down, who gave us the roots and the wings to fly. This one is for the dads, who inspired our LVN students to aim high and never give up. This is for the dads, who believed in our potential and helped us on the way to success by supporting us morally, physically, and of course, financially!

Oh, who cares what they say, when they announce on the radio that the highest numbers of collect calls happen on Father’s Day. When you decide to become an LVN nurse and enter an LVN program, who is there to cosign your loan? Daddy, of course! He is your number one, always has been, and always will be. If not him, then who would help you? And when the money runs out, who will write you that check to help you out? LVN school is not cheap, and daddies know it. Besides, the world would be a much grimmer place without the dads.

So, this one is to the dads that stand by our LVN students, because if not for their masculine tender loving care, and their strong shoulder to lean on, where would they be?

There is excitement in the air because Gurnick’s LVN students in Group 11 and 12 have their last clinical day tomorrow, Friday, June 18, 2010.  The Gurnick LVN students have been working for LVN certification and studying hard the last couple of months and they await a well needed break. The students will enjoy two weeks off before their last module starts. Many Gurnick students have discussed that even though they will not be going to class, they will start to look into the availability of LVN jobs in California.  The students are realizing that with only one more module to complete before graduation, their career in nursing is becoming a reality.

As a clinical instructor, I have seen the students grow and develop their nursing skills, critical thinking and self confidence. They are well on their way to becoming wonderful nurses. This last module they have focused on bedside care, vital signs, documentation, administrating medication, wound dressing changes and insertion of Foley catheters. Many of the students had the opportunity to remove stables and apply steri-strips to an incisions site.

For their last module, the Gurnick students in Groups 11 and 12 will be able to focus on OB/GYN, Pediatrics and Psychology.

Here we are, Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts has joined the latest trend of blogging, and so fashionably is publishing the latest happenings on the Gurnick horizon. So, what IS happening this week, you will ask, and the answer as always is: working toward the success of our LVN students. They, harder than ever, are working toward their degrees. Final exams are coming soon, and Medsurg with Pharmacology, being a super tough combination, is grounding our LVN students harder than ever.

They can’t wait for the summer break to come. And it is coming in just a couple of weeks, but until then, it is the hard study time. Surely, they can’t wait to throw their textbooks and uniforms somewhere in the far corner of their closet, but for now the scrubs and the books must work overtime. Cumulative exams on the material, learned over the past three months, are not an easy task. LVN program is difficult and challenging here at Gurnick, but it pays off. Where else will you find such a fantastic combination of teachers, staff, and a program that guarantees you success in just one year, if you put your mind to it? Where else will you find instructors and administration working selflessly to help every student succeed in their endeavor of completing the LVN program?

Gurnick Academy is the only LVN college in the Bay Area who can proudly say: “we care about our LVN students, and we help them any way we can.” Whether it is health issues, problems in the family, work situation, or financial difficulties, we work it out with our students. After all, our mission is to help everyone who wants to do something with their life and get an education, get their education here at Gurnick.

The “dummy” is not so dumb when it is a high-fidelity simulator equipped with computer simulations and can respond as if it were a real patient.  As technology advances, so do clinical opportunities for students at Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts VN Program.  High-fidelity simulators include life-like and life-size mannequins that can be programmed to be both interactive and responsive to the student nurse’s care.  Simulated clinical scenarios provide not only a safe setting to teach students in  LVN / LPN schools how to perform different nursing tasks, but, surprisingly, are stimulating much more than critical thinking skills. Leighsa Sahroff, EdD, RN, NPP is the Coordinator of Simulation at Hunter College School of Nursing, City University of New York.  During a presentation entitled High Fidelity Simulators and Holistic Nursing Communication: 21st Century Technology meets Holistic Nursing Concepts, Sahroff offered examples of the unexpected lessons that student nurses are gleaning from the high-fidelity simulation process.

Instead of student nurses witnessing their first death experience in the hospital, they are afforded the opportunity to process their emotions within the simulation lab.  At times, there is so much happening at a real clinical site that the student misses certain cues, especially communication cues that are vital in both preventative care and in developing the nurse/patient caring-relationship.  The advantage of learning from simulated scenarios in an LPN program is that they can be repeated, video-taped, and slowed down to foster processing and awareness.

The learning possibilities are vast, especially in areas that stimulate student emotions around labor/delivery, fetal demise, pediatric illness, heart attack, seizure, anaphylactic shock, and psychiatric illness. By allowing students the freedom to make mistakes within the four walls of their school, where the simulated patient can recover from anything by the flip of a switch,  students can learn how do deal with real-life situations and, at the same time, explore their own strengths and weaknesses without any harm to a real patient.n

The delicious smell of barbeque smoke is in the air, every here and there, chairs are pulled outside, backyard umbrellas open, and swimming pools become crowded by the minute. Cars, with happy dogs peaking out of the windows, are rushing to the shore, to the ocean, where the hot summer sun meets the welcoming, soft sand and the cool, salty water. The summer is here.

As our LVN schools doors swing open, out hurry our nursing students, hugging their books, holding them against their bodies, rushing to their cars, or catching those rides home. They hurry home to their families to start the summer vacation. No school for two whole weeks! No homework, no classes, no clinicals, no tests, no quizzes, no sweat! Well, perhaps, yes, sweat, but that would be from the hot Californian sun, kissing the pale in-door student skin and the tired bodies, exhausted from hard work and sleepless nights, while studying at our high-paced LVN program.

For two whole weeks there will be not a care in the world. Going to an LVN College is great and rewarding, but nothing beats a good, healthy, so-very-relaxing school break! The summer is here, and even though, the Gurnick LVN students are very serious about their studies, they will also seriously enjoy their well-deserved summer break.