Medical Training

Whether you are considering becoming a RN or a LVN/LPN classes, travel nursing opportunities are abundant.  These temporary nursing positions are a great way to see someplace new, and a way to consider places to later relocate. I once knew of a nurse who wanted to spend her summers near the ocean.  Instead of going through an agency or a nursing recruiter, she asked the hospital of her choice for a summer salary with a housing allotment.  This was a great way for her family of four to spend a summer in her idea of paradise. However if you are looking for simplicity in job placement, it is easy to search on the internet for traveling nurse staffing agencies; make sure you first find out which hospitals and shifts that they are contracted for.

Hospitals generally utilize traveling nurses to cope with the increasing shortage of nurses. If you graduated from a LVN/LPN program and are considering working in another state, first find out the licensure requirements from the state’s board of LVN.  Since each state has different LVN/LPN requirements, it is a good idea to plan ahead.  Another recommendation before signing onto this journey is to first work in one facility for at least one year to develop a foundation and learn as much as you can about nursing.  Sometimes nursing students make the mistake of thinking that all they need to know about nursing will be taught at their LVN/LPN school.

Even though nursing schools, such as Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts offer “real” life situations with simulated mannequins and clinical experience in healthcare facilities, the career of nursing is an ongoing classroom filled with endless opportunities to learn.  In addition, by selecting an area of expertise and becoming certified in that specialty, will place you in even more demand, which can lead to more choices in your job positions.  One last suggestion is to speak directly with a traveling nurse to find out the pros and cons.  If you don’t know of any traveling nurses, you can check out one of the many blogsites written by “real” nurses who have experience in this exciting career.

Ninety one percent success rate! Wow! Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts is ahead of many other LVN schools in California! Our most recent graduates’ NCLEX passing results just came in, and the results were astonishing! This was great and exciting news our Chief Academic Officer brought to the latest faculty meeting last Friday. All the instructors in the meeting were happy and proud to hear the news. And as we thought about it, our school deserves to be recognized for one of the strongest VN Programs in California.

Just think about this. Only a few years ago, Gurnick Academy was a small single campus Vocational Nursing program, struggling to compete with other major LVN programs in the Bay Area. And look, where we are now. We are growing stronger than ever, better than ever, more successful than ever.

The journey to success of Gurnick Academy has not been easy. Our Nursing College went through many changes, upgrades, and innovations, which came with much efforts and energy from our school’s executive board, and, of course, all the faculty and staff. This is an example of successful team work, and we do have an amazing team of coordinators, clinical instructors, VN course lecturers, support staff, and of course, our leaders. Without them, who knows, where we would be?

Here at the Concord campus our vocational nursing students are entering the halfway mark of their module and oh boy, are they happy!  For group 13, this module was their first time in a clinical situation.  Many of the students had never performed real life hands-on care for a patient before.  Over the last five weeks I have seen these students grow with confidence and ability.  Many of the students are finding out that the clinical rotation just doesn’t teach patient care, it also incorporates a good work ethic.  They are learning the value of good communication skills, working with multiple disciplinary teams (physical therapy, dietary, social service, etc) and how to prioritize their assignment.

As my LVN students study and fill their mind with new facts and data, they are also being taught how to become more sensitive to their patient during the physical tasks of lifting & transferring patients from a bed to wheelchair and stretcher, as well as pushing wheelchairs and stretchers.  Inside the LVN/LPN schools skill lab the students practice these skills and more while using their classmate and mannequins to substitute as a patient. One of the skills to master is “breaking the patient’s fall.”  The word “break” may sound as if they are breaking their own back to protect the patient, but rest assure that this is a safe technique that the students learn to allow their patient to slide down the student nurse’s leg to the floor, instead of a fatal fall to the floor.

The LVN Nursing students have both clinical instructor and their illustrated textbook with detailed steps to guide them down the safe path.  Along with practicing these steps, they themselves get to experience being a patient who is dependent upon someone else for transferring from one place to another.  Instead of choosing when and having the ability to jump out of bed, sit on a toilet, and freely ambulate down the hallway, the students sit in wheelchair waiting for another student nurse to push them through the handicapped-bathroom doorway and then transfer them onto the toilet.  Don’t worry, even though we want our nursing students to experience being a hospital patient the students keep their clothes on.

Soon after a student nurse experienced being a patient in a wheelchair she stated, “It’s the little things that matter.” She was referring to her classmate’s attentiveness to her as he pushed her in a wheelchair outside and avoided the hot sun, kept an even pace, and not once jeopardized injury to her limbs.  This was her positive experience after she had pushed him around in the wheelchair.  Another example of how valuable being the patient is to learning a skill is when students take turns being lifted/transferred from one hospital bed to another.  I can always tell who has never experienced being the patient before, as their eyes get big and sometimes even let out a scream as they are temporarily air-born during their transfer from one bed to another.  These valuable lessons that heighten one’s awareness require first-hand experience as they cannot be fully taught by a textbook or lecture alone.  Hopefully memories of being the “patient” will carry over to their LVN/LPN job to remind them of the importance of being sensitive to their patient.

Well, the Summer break is officially over at Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts, and it’s time to roll up those sleeves again and get back to work. For some of our LVN students it’s time to continue their studies, get back to those thick textbooks and get ready to take more lecture notes. They feel like the seniors of Gurnick Academy. LVN classrooms come back to life after a two-week break, and like a busy bee-hive, our LVN college is buzzing again with students hurrying to their classes, instructors walking down the hallways, locomotion in the corridors, moving desks, equipment, projectors… lights… camera… action!

And yet, though some of our nursing students are soon to graduate, others are only beginning their journey. We are talking about the LVN students who are just starting their LVN program now. This will be their first module, and they are about to take their first LVN course, the Fundamentals of Nursing. Our newcomers are about to experience their first contact with this profession, with the world of nursing, as they attend the Clinical Skills Lab course. And even though they have a long way to go to their graduation day and they may feel a little nervous right now, they are excited, because they know that they are on their way to something wonderful, stimulating, and very rewarding. Welcome back to school, 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!

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.

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.

Have you heard about the Bodies Revealed exhibit?  This exhibit’s title is aptly named as it reveals not only how the body works beneath the skin, but also stimulates the viewer to see themselves in ways they may never have imagined.  This summer, our LVN program students and their instructors will have the opportunity to learn about various systems of the human body and their interrelated functions as they view two hundred organs and fourteen plasticized human bodies.

Instead of learning about anatomy in a cadaver lab reeking of noxious formaldehyde or limited to the four walls of a LVN classroom, the students will enhance their LVN education with a three-dimensional walking tour to see the effects of disease and unhealthy lifestyles on the body. By witnessing the effects of disease the students will naturally turn inward taking an introspective look at their own life style and choices, and, hopefully, be inspired and motivated to care for their own bodies.  Moreover, if you’re feeling a little uneasy reading about the students examining real dead bodies, imagine the advantage to the student nurse.

Instead the overwhelming feelings that might be stimulated upon experiencing the death of a patient for the first time, the students can begin to address their own feelings about death and dying as they walk through the cell-phone-off corridors of the museum. This will be an experience they will probably never forget.

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.