by Jana Enos

Created on: April 26, 2009

In my 38 years thus far, I've had 1 disappointment in my chosen career path. It took me 13 years after graduating high school to determine that I wanted to be a nurse. After working menial jobs since graduating high school it was a welcome epiphany to finally have an actual career that I felt impassioned about....

Because the state of California has the most stringent rules and regulations in the educational process and requirements for becoming a nurse, I knew that the road was not going to be an easy one. I quit my full-time job at the time and returned to school full-time to begin taking all the pre-requisite courses that I needed and found that there were two career paths in licensed nursing that one could choose. Since the Licensed Vocational Nursing Program was a one year program and the Registered Nurse Program was a 2 year program and required more pre-requisite courses then the LVN, I took a chance with the "Lottery" system which is the method they use here in California, and applied for the LVN program since I currently had all pre-requisites for the program completed, and low and behold I was selected.

At the time, people were told by the college administrators that becoming an LVN first was a bridge to the RN Program, however, nearly 5 years later, it's crystal clear that the 'bridge' was not a bridge at all but a concrete wall similiar to the Great Wall of China.

The main differences between an LVN and RN are in the school required courses that must be passed with a rather high percentage rate. What this equates to is more revenue for the school systems. Without getting into political issues and personal opinions, it was after working full-time as an LVN for 2 years in an acute care hospital setting that I began to seek out the options available to me within the state of California to advance my career as an RN. To my amazement I discovered that the upgrade to RN programs required more schooling, substantially greater costs and time then as if I had initially begun my career as an RN.

The frustration and discouragement that I and so many other LVN's who themselves had decades of more experience then I have had to date, is nationwide and to date has not been addressed by educators, individual states or the government. And so, nursing schools nationwide will to date, select a person with absolutely zero clinical experience in nursing over an LVN with substantial clinical experience in the field when granting admission into their nursing programs.

The true shortage of nurses nationwide is not because there are not enough people applying into the programs but is instead because of choices such as the above discussed as well as a wide spread disrespect and lack of appreciation for those who carry LVN licenser's.

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