Medical Training

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.

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.

As an instructor for an LVN program, we know how important laughter is, when it comes to learning. Imagine, the first day of class, nervous brand new LVN students are anxiously waiting at their desks to discover what kind of teacher their new instructor will be. Will this be a demanding “prima donna,” or a tyrant and a monster, or perhaps, an easy-going pushover?  Will this instructor burry them under mounds of homework, or will she expect them to absorb and regurgitate every word she speaks, or will she be easy-going, for an “easy A?” …Probably, not.

As the class begins, it starts with a joke, something related to the field of healthcare, or maybe the teacher making fun of herself, making a quick humorous remark at her own expense. And suddenly something magical happens: a smile breaks out on a worried face, and the tense wrinkle between the eyebrows disappears, nervous grimace is replaced by a friendly warmth in the eyes of a student. Now, we are ready to learn.

It is absolutely essential for our LVN students, as well as any other students, to be at ease, when coming to class. Tension is one of the enemies of effective learning. A nervous student is less receptive to new information, less responsive to the learning environment, and more prone to failing. This goes back to the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: the need to feel safe is much more important than the need for learning and self-actualization. The need for our LVN students to feel that they are in a safe place, where they will not be attacked, but rather can express their needs, feelings, and concerns, is vital to successful learning environment.

This is why here, at Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts, we make sure, our students feel exactly this way. This is why on the first day of class, the instructor makes an announcement that the very first course our new students are taking will start with a special event, where everyone has to bring a food item and a joke to share with their new classmates. Laughter is the first thing that can put anyone at ease in an instant. If you can laugh with someone, they momentarily become your buddy, and you are no longer so worried about making friends with complete strangers.

Yes, here, at Gurnick academy, we believe that laughter brings people together, making us closer to each other, helping us learn from each other and get along. After all, this is what we all want: to find our own place in this world and to get along with others. Only then, we can strive for higher heights, and attempt to achieve more. Only then we can truly live, as we laugh, and learn.

Most of my students will ask me if there are demands for them when they graduate from Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts. I would positively answer yes and would even encourage my students to look at different nursing website and job site.

As my former instructors and teachers told me when I start my nursing career nobody can replace nursing even how technically advance we are or develop a robot that can perform nursing task.

Patients will always need physical touch and human interaction especially when we are sick. No computer program will be developed to give especially human care and support that each person need to recuperate or get better. It will be hard to program a computer to show emotion of empathy and care with facial expression. Thus, a computer with verbal skill to do therapeutic communications with different accents that could relay the human message that a nurse would be able to tell her/his patient that she/he really care for him to get better or to have the best care she/he needs or deserve.

No computer would able to mimic the simple, warm touch that nurses give to their ailing patients. Therefore, nurses are still irreplaceable and much needed by patients to help them recuperate, recover or make them feel better from their illness.

Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts
Concord Campus