What is an LVN?
An LVN is a Licensed Vocational Nurse which is a nurse that is licensed by the state to provide routine patient care. Some states use the term LPN or Licensed Practical Nurse rather than LVN. An LVN can work in a hospital, long-term care facility, convalescent home, doctor’s office or surgical center, providing many of the same services also performed by Registered Nurses (RNs). The LVN, however, must be supervised by RNs or doctors, and cannot do everything an RN does. In some states, an LVN never starts an intravenous line (IV), while in others, they may be able to obtain IV certification to perform this procedure. In areas where they do not start IVs, most LVNs can take blood or administer injections. The LVN may have to do a lot of the clean up in hospital settings. Preparing rooms for new patients, bathing patients, or cleaning up a patient who has vomited are typical LVN jobs. These jobs are important, yet some LVNs feel that their supervisors abuse their authority by assigning t
LVN stands for Licensed Vocational Nurse. The scope of nursing practice and educational preparation of Licensed Vocational Nurses (LVNs) in California and Texas are similar to that of Licensed Practical Nurses in all other states. In California, the legal definition of vocational nursing is the performance of services requiring those technical, manual skills acquired by means of a course in an accredited school of vocational nursing, or its equivalent, practiced under the direction of a licensed physician or registered professional nurse. LVNs provide care in structured healthcare settings for clients experiencing common, well defined health illness problems. They administer nursing care to clients who are ill, injured, disabled, or convalescing and participate in health teaching and disease prevention. The goal of interventions is to maintain or reestablish health at the optimum level. In the hospital, LVNs perform a variety of functions. Many provide basic bedside nursing care. They
An LVN is the same as an LPN. In two states, California and Texas, basic nurses are referred to as LVNs (licensed vocational nurses). In the other 48 states the basic nurses are called LPNs (licensed practical nurses). I am licensed in California and Texas, so I am called an LVN. If I were to apply for licensure in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Nevada, or any of the other states, I’d become an LPN. It’s the same nurse with a different name in California and Texas. I suppose California and Texas need to differentiate themselves from the rest of the country.
