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Question:
Is there something anyway where a person gets more than two chances or can take on just what they can master at the time?
The regents nursing program has been mentioned several times. Can someone tell me if there is any way to do this without already being an LPN? Or is there a shortcut to becoming an LPN or getting some clinical background?
I have a friend who is interested but she wants to be able to study at her pace and also follow the lines of query that interest her at the moment. At first she thought the regents would arrange for clinical but that does not look like it is the case. Can it be arranged some other way or through some other program?
Answer:
I am progressing in the Regent’s program with ACT-PEP exams behind me already. It IS challenging, even with prior experience, and I think anyone who does not have at least LP/VN experience is not going to pass the clinical evaluation. If the clinical were limited to the ER, EMT’s and EMT-P’s could pass without much problem but it’s not. CNA’s will even find it difficult as much of the practical experience does NOT include medication administration, IV therapy, etc.
I am sure there are EMT’s and CNA’s who HAVE passed the tests, but they are the exceptional few.
What do you mean, she also has been in nursing school a bit? If she couldn’t pass the standard nursing school curriculum, I would suggest that she’s going to have a hard time ping Regents. There are smart, experienced nurses who find Regents a major challenge. Care plans are difficult, especially if you try to do them well, but you can’t get through nursing school without mastering them. While your friend may be better at clinical than the rest, she needs to be able to put it all together—academics and clinical—in order to pass the state board examination, and to function competently as an RN.
As one who’s taught nurse’s aides in an LPN program, I can tell you that you can’t learn to be a nurse from a nursing magazine or a video. Those are great as support, as supplements, and for continuing education, but they don’t begin to take the place of a solid nursing program. In almost no way is an aide, despite her background, prepared to function as a nurse. Although their experiences are valuable, aides still have to learn the role of the licensed nurse from scratch.
I concur that your friend go to LPN school or to an associate degree RN program. There’s no shortcut. Perhaps she might take some of the prerequisite courses such as anatomy or microbiology before she jumps into the nursing curriculum. If this is too difficult, she might have to consider that maybe nursing isn’t really for her.
You mean like only read the Cliffs Notes?? Nursing education is something that takes progression. It’s hard to learn step 4, until you’ve mastered steps 1-3. In fact, without understanding the who’s, what’s, where’s and why’s of steps 1-3, you’re ability to do step 4 well is questionable. I loved the OR when in school. But if I’d skipped microbiology first, what do you think my comprehension of sterility would be? Would I have a CLUE as to what dangers there are, and why we do what we do to protect our patients as well as ourselves?
ummm… you mean it’s not important to know what nursing is? What it is not? What future it may hold? Lot’s of changes in nursing, such as new opportunities, advanced practice nurses like FNP’s and such. Is this NOT the place to learn about the profession in the first place? To be introduced to the esprit d’corps nurses? If she can not understand how to write up a care plan, which by the way I still have to do in my institution (not a computer generated one either), what has she done to rectify this? Has she gone to any bookstore and purchased care plan manuals to help her? Has she looked at other students good plans to see what she is missing? I remember in school that just seeing other examples, gave me an idea of what I was aiming for. And trust me, you get some basic concepts down and you rattle those off time and again. Can she not understand that while they are a pain, and some say worthless doublespeak, they do help students learn to plan their care and focus on the most pressing points. Care plans also are very fluid, meaning that you may find one problem taken care of while another one presents. You learn to update and re-evaluate as you go. That’s about it, I think, for what care plans do..give you a jumping off point? Not that anyone really reads them, by the way, but imagine that a new nurse was walking into a pt’s room to care for them and you want them to know what you’ve already figured out the pt needs and the rationale for it (documented rationales were required in my school, but not in the real world where we assume folks understand already)
How many chances do you want?? Is there ever going to be enough for some who just might not have the capacity to be a nurse?? In some life or death situations, when a nurse is called on to be able to act appropriately, how many chances do you think they get?? Please understand, I do not mean to discourage her from going into nursing but there is not a short cut into this profession. Reading nursing magazines, watching videos and having one or two courses under her belt, will not furnish her with the clinical background that is required to be a nurse. And their admission requirements did not mention acceptance of nursing assistent experience.
She could submit an application and ask for an evaluation of her N.A. experience. They sometimes will grant a wavier. But her experience is not that of a nurse or an EMST or a Paramedic, if I understand you correctly, she has been in a program but washed out for some reason. If that is true, needs to examine why she failed (not being able to do care plans does fail one). As I said, there are no short cuts.
The Regents program was developed to give people with life experience credit
for their experience. According to the nurses I talked with (they were all LPN’s with experience) going into a hospital you do not know, being evaluated on your care, over several days, and knowing that credit depends on passing, they found stressful. They also felt that the evaluators tended to examine what they did in detail. And they did not blame them for that, they were certifying them.
Your friend needs to give the whole idea some more thought. The Regents program does not provide clinical practice. Admission requirements, to the associate degree program, require previous work in health care. They accept, after evaluating, graduates from military programs, individuals with a heavy health care background such as EMT’s, Paramedics, physician Assistance’s, L.P.N. They will evaluate a background but you have to be able to demonstrate clinical expertise.
Your friend would be better off either going to school to become a LPN or a two year degree program in nursing. And she will require work experience prior to taking their clinical examines or she will be wasting her and their time. Their clinical evaluations are difficult and stressful, according to some nurses I know.
The Regents program is not intended to be a short cut into nursing. You must have a strong work background and experience in the field you choose.
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