Medical Training

Have you heard the latest and the most exciting news and Gurnick Academy? Our newest LVN Program graduates, who just finished the post-program review course, completed their first attempt to pass the exit HESI exam last Saturday. The results were unbelievable! 82% passed it the first time! This is the first time in the history of our school, when we have such high passing rates from the first HESI attempt! Thanks to the hard work of all our instructors, staff, administration, and, of course, the students themselves, we are achieving such astonishing results!

We are half-way through the module, and it’s time for the six-week evaluations for our LVN students at Gurnick Academy. All faculty and students must participate to follow up on our VN students’ academic progress. This means, the instructors are completing evaluation sheets to establish the academic and practical standing of each student.

What a great idea this is! Each of our nursing students will find out from the teachers, where they are in terms of their grades and overall progress in our LVN program. Some of our students are only at the beginning of their journey, and have a long way ahead of them. This is their first module on the LVN program, and they are trying so hard! Some of the subjects are very new to many of them, but still fun to learn and practice. Practicing using crutches in the Clinical Skills lab, learning about the nursing process in the Fundamentals’ class, and studying for midterms in Anatomy, is not easy, but surely is interesting and involving.  Other students have been on the Nursing program for a while, and now they are half-way through their courses. For these nursing students, it is time to stay focused in their Medical Surgical Nursing and Pharmacology, as well as keep improving their skills in the Clinical Practice rotations.

Half-way through the module, we want to motivate our students to keep up the good work and work on the areas for improvement. This is the time to replenish the connectedness between students and their instructors, and to insure the continuity of high quality education.

Today, I had a great opportunity to meet with the Concord campus faculty of Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts. What a wonderful group they are! I was invited to give a presentation on the effective teaching methods for the didactic and clinical instructors. The meeting was very interactive, as the faculty members started asking questions and making comments, and the excitement of the event was present in the air.

As I was standing in front of this lively, intelligent group, I thought to myself: “What a wonderful idea to have faculty of different campuses interact with each other like this!” If anyone benefits from such interaction, it is our LVN students! It’s true! When working with an accelerated LVN programs, instructors have to work together, presenting a united front, when it comes to developing successful teaching methods and training techniques. Not only we get to “vent” about our problems in teaching, but we also find out the approaches of other teachers to certain challenges. And sometimes, we get to learn something completely unexpected and refreshing, leading to “Aha!” moments of our own, when we move outside of our comfortable boxes and look at what other instructors are doing.

I am proud to be a part of Gurnick Academy, who is promoting such interaction between the VN School faculties. Instructors get to learn from each other, share their concerns, experiences, and expertise with each other, making our LVN school stronger and more successful.

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, 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!

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!

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.

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?

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.