Medical Training

So you finished going to an LVN school in California and you are wondering, “That was a lot of work, but what can I do with this LVN certification?” Well, first of all, think back to when you made the decision to become a nurse in the first place. Did you want to help people? If so, in what way?  Maybe you took care of a family member who was sick at home and you thought that was something you could do as a career.  Maybe it’s a career change because you wanted to be an advocate for people who are disabled or in capacitated due to illness.  Once you remember the initial reason for your becoming an LVN, you can explore possibilities and options available.  If you like children, look into hospitals, clinics, home health care, pediatric hospice, or maybe school nursing.  You liked the technology and machines, look into the companies who made them and give them a call.  They use nurses to help teach others how to use them and to sell them.  This could be a lot of fun.  If you happen to like the excitement and the adrenaline rush of thinking on your feet and acting quickly and yet not get too emotionally involved with the patient, then maybe emergency room nursing is for you.  It’s a very fast paced area to work.  If you do like working with people, the patients and other health care providers, then bedside nursing is great.  You have 8 or 10 or 12 hour shifts where you will see the patient throughout those hours.  And within that area are several specialties, such as geriatrics, that is working with the elderly.  You could work at skilled nursing facilities, rehabilitation centers, day care facilities, or some retirement homes have need of nurses. Sometimes you have to think outside of the box when considering where to work. Large manufacturing companies often have on-site nurses, sporting facilities where professional athletes play, camp nursing would allow one to be outside and work with either healthy or special populations (asthmatics, cancer patients, etc), and working in the prison system.  Prisoners get sick or already were, so there is another special area of care.

Do you enjoy seeing other parts of the country or even the world?  Travel nursing is an exciting field.  Many nursing magazines have advertisements for travel nurses.  You get to experience living in another part of the country, learning about their culture and beliefs, maybe even a different language.

Registry nursing is a challenging area to be.  Here you would work within a company who would send you out to appropriate places to work.  It could be one-to-one nursing in someone’s home, or possibly working in a hospital, or even giving out flu shots at the local drug store, constantly changing environments with new people.

LVN’s also can become instructors and teach other students to become LVNs.  But, with all these areas of nursing, you have to do research and find out more about it.  Some areas will only accept registered nurses; that is why you have to ask more questions. Sometimes you have to explore further from the cities to find where an LVN can work, but the jobs are out there.

This coming weekend we are celebrating the National Memorial Day, when we honor all those who did not come back home, giving their lives for our freedom and our chance for a bright future. Along with all those soldiers who never returned, and stayed laying dead on the battlefields, we also remember all the nurses who so selflessly gave up their lives, while saving the lives of others. We are celebrating the heroes who attended the wounded and the dying, risking their own lives. We are celebrating every male and female nurse, who had ever been through the horrors of war from Florence Nightingale, “The Lady with The Lamp,” as she helped sick and wounded soldiers during Crimean War over a century and a half ago to those nurses helping our troops these days in the Middle East and all over the world.

After an exhausting, gory fight, and the flames would die down, a few lone small figures would come out to the battle field, covered with the bodies of the army warriors who had fallen during the attack, to seek out those who are still breathing and alive, trying to save every precious life. At great risk to themselves these brave souls would put the wounded soldiers’ bodies on their fragile petite shoulders to take them to safety and provide necessary medical care. And when a dying soldier’s condition would be beyond medical help, and nothing could be done for the man, a nurse would comfort him by saying a prayer or singing a song, or even writing the last letter to his mother or the girl waiting at home. So many of those brave big hearts in tiny bodies in white gave up their lives while saving the wounded soldiers!

Today, every LVN school in California should remember those nurses, who never came back. We honor those nurses who left behind their loved ones at home: their children, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, their families. We admire what those nurses did in their time for their country and for their people. And when our time comes, we take that Florence Nightingale’s pledge to help those in need, and to selflessly serve, as all the ones before us did.

As any LVN college, we raise our future LVN nurses to be caring and compassionate persons, going into the future ready not only to fulfill their career goals, but also to fulfill their calling for helping others. We are certain that if there is need, our LVN graduates will go out there and be heroes, just like many hero nurses before them. They will never be forgotten, and we can only hope to live up to them.