Medical Training

When we, the faculty at Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts, tell our students “we are here for you,” we actually mean it. Yes, it’s true, our LVN students have to work very hard toward their degree, and no, we do not “sell” the diplomas for the tuition fees. Our nursing students have to put a lot of work and their time into their studies to get the right to become a Licensed Vocational Nurse. However, when it comes to helping our students achieve their goal in education and becoming a healthcare professional, we stand behind them one hundred percent.

So, when LVN program students express their opinion on assignments given in class and at home, we listen to what they have to say. Everyone has a voice and deserves to be heard and considered. We do want to know, what works for our students, what learning techniques are the most useful in achieving maximum results, and which methods may need to be retired. This way, we get maximum student satisfaction, and yet the highest results in academic success. It is possible to get both: high students satisfaction scores for our school, and high NCLEX scores from our graduates. We push them hard, but we push them wisely. After all, we are here for them primarily. So whatever they have to say, we do listen , and we to hear.

Well we are back to school and it’s time to buckle up, study hard and enjoy the now. And I do mean enjoy the now. This time for knowledge, learned by both LVN courses and practical hands-on experience, is an important leap towards furthering your education and ultimately holding that coveted license as a Vocational Nurse (LPN Licensed Practical Nurse.

For my clinical students this is their first time for what we term as patient care with “real patients.”  The students are now interacting with real time and place situations in the process of becoming a fluent and valuable LVN of the future.  Here are a few of the skills which you must acquire during this critical and fulfilling portion of your clinical studies:

Patient Care:
A. Vital Signs
B. Wound care and treatments
C. Foley care and insertion
D. Collection of urine specimens
E. Removal of surgical staples
F. Develop critical thinking
G. Develop leadership skills

These skills must be obtained and made ready for the call of your new sought-after profession as a Licensed Vocational Nurse.  Be proud of those letters LVN and keep those letters always at the forefront of your day.  Remember it’s a journey and every journey begins with one step forward.

If you attended this weekend’s graduation ceremony of our VN group 17 and 18, class of 2010, you, probably, would have cried too. Tears of joy of making it to this long-anticipated day, filled with bitter-sweet memories and good-byes, tears of happiness and pride were rolling down the cheeks of our LVN students and faculty. Smiles were on every face, and no heart was left untouched.Following the heartrending Amazing Grace, the speeches of our VN program director and program coordinator, the beloved instructors and counselor, touched the hearts of the graduates and their families, who came to support and celebrate this special day for Gurnick Academy.

When the time came to light those candles and to pronounce the famous Florence Nightingale Pledge, the faces of our graduates lit up. It was not just the glow of the candles, but the deep, sincere belief in every word of the oath they were taking and the pride and devotion in becoming nurses that kindled the radiance on those faces. Oh, how pure that moment was! The distribution of the diplomas and the pinning of each student by their family members: husbands, wives, parents, or children, was simply breathtaking in the sincerity of the moment. Then the speeches by the student body government that brought tears to the eyes of the listeners as well as the speakers themselves were followed by the ever-so-moving slide show, accompanied by song No More You, where pictures of the fun times, working and learning together, growing to be nurses, were shown to the audience.

Our LVN students have finished their studies here at Gurnick, but they will never leave our hearts. And we will always welcome them back with open arms, because no matter where they go, or where their career takes them, they will always have us: their Gurnick family. Congratulations, class of 2010! Farewell and Good Luck!

Our Groups 11 and 12 have just begun Module 4.  We’ve advised them even though they see the light at the end of the tunnel, they should hope it’s not a train! (LOL)  Their coursework in becoming an LVN is now covering the specialties of obstetric nursing, pediatric nursing and psychiatric nursing.  They have finished with 24 weeks (that was intense) of Medical Surgical Nursing parts 1 and 2, and Pharmacology, parts 1 and 2.  They will take their 2nd HESI exam next week, this one on Medical Surgical Nursing.

They will go on various field trips this module to Sonoma Developmental Center, John Muir Medical Center, Telecare Gladman, a psyche facility in Oakland, and California Medical Facility, the men’s prison in Vacaville which houses inmates with medical problems—they even have a hospice.  Various LVN schools in California may also have these types of clinical rotations.  Module 4 clinical will also include a day-long OB mock-up using our exciting new patient simulation lab.

They will also earn pediatric clinical hours required for becoming an LVN at Lynn Center in Pittsburg, a school for special needs children from 18 months to 5 years.  They will visit Martin Luther King, Jr. Preschool, where they observe normal growth and development as well as abnormal growth and development. They will also visit with children at the Concord HeadStart site where they will interact with children from infancy through pre-Kindergarten.  They will also spend clinical time at the Juvenile Justice Center Medical Unit in San Leandro for a combination Pediatric and Psych rotation.

Did you see the fireworks this year? Amazing! Well, they are amazing every year, actually. This year, however, for Gurnick Academy, the fireworks seem especially bright to our LVN students, who have worked so hard during this past module! Now that the Final Exams are behind, it is time to enjoy the summer break.

Yes, yes, we know, it is never long enough, and the nursing students are craving a bit longer vacation, but in this accelerated program, two weeks is all you get, if you want to finish your VN nursing degree in just one year. This is why these students come to our LVN program: fast-paced, efficient, effective, packed with information, knowledge to gain, and skills to learn in a fairly short period of time. Besides, Gurnick is the LVN school who cares about our LVN students, helping each and every one of them to succeed and make it to that ever-so-anticipated graduation day.

In just another week, it will be time to again roll up our sleeves and get back to work, but for now, it is time for romantic getaways, hanging with family, Fourth of July fireworks, barbeque, and nice weather. There is time for work, and there is time for play. You deserve a good time, Gurnick!

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!

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.

As we head into the last weeks of the current module, our students are looking forward to a well-earned 2-week summer break.  Students in groups 11 and 12, who are currently in Module 3, have been studying Medical Surgical Nursing and Pharmacology for 22 weeks straight (as there is no break between Module 2 and Module 3), and they are feeling it.  They are also feeling more accomplished and comfortable in their student-nurse role, and all that it entails.  Students in Groups 13 and 14 are finishing up Module 1, and looking forward to beginning the clinical internships at various skilled nursing centers in the Concord area.  They have also made strides in becoming capable student nurses as they continue their education and training at Gurnick Academy.

We are looking forward to our new batch of LVN and PT students scheduled to begin their prerequisite class on July 6th.  The VN/PT prerequisite class, Essential Medical Bioscience, includes an introduction to anatomy and physiology, as well as introductory study of medical terminology and drug calculations.  For those that haven’t practiced math since high school, manipulating fractions, decimals and metric conversions can be challenging.  But through steady practice, most all students are successful in mastering the drug calculation skills necessary for becoming an LVN.

Our students come from a variety of backgrounds when they enter the LVN program.  Some are Certified Nursing Assistants furthering their career in health care.  For these students the practice of patient transfer and general approach to patient care is familiar.  For these students, however, the training and education to become an LVN usually involves “unlearning” their role as a CNA.  The approach to the patient or client as an LVN requires a deeper level of critical thinking and analysis of client data.  Beginning with obtaining vital signs, the CNA turned LVN student recognizes not just abnormalities, but takes the VN student into the realm of, “why is this happening?”  More education in anatomy, physiology and critical thinking enables the CNA turned LVN student to begin to think like a nurse.