Back To School I Go

Exciting news in the backpack nurse universe! This nurse is heading back to school!

As an Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) , it is virtually impossible to find work in the international aid medical field. Organizations such as Red Cross and Doctors Beyond Borders simply will not accept LPN, and will only accept Registered Nurses (RN). Up until recently, this made perfect sense as many times in the field, it is only the nurse and a doctor, and sometimes only the nurse themselves. This required that the nurse be well versed in acute trauma care. The LPN course is a two year diploma, where as the RN program is a four year degree. Up until recently, the LPN program simply wasn’t strong enough to prepare LPN’s for the high acuity of care necessary for the field, let alone the Emergency Room.

All of that has changed now. The LPN program has progressed in leaps and bounds and LPN’s everywhere are finding new fields opening up to them in the acute care setting, not the least of which include the E.R and the Operating Room.

And it is in this direction that I am now moving in the hopes of opening doors into the international field for not only myself, but LPN’s everywhere. I have been accepted into the LPN operating room course. In this field I will not only assist anaesthesiologists, but scrub in and assist the surgeon directly as well. It is an exciting field that I am ecstatic to join into, and I know that it might be just the extra push I will need to push open the doors into the international aid community for other LPN’s to follow.

Wish me luck!

Story Time

I would love to hear from other LPN’s/ two-year diploma nurses (every country has different names) on how they found their way into different high acuity fields, particularly if you moved to a different country to do your nursing! What area do you work in? If you went to a different country, what hoops did you have to jump through? what group did you go with? links to websites/ group pages would be much appreciated!