Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses

Career Description: Care for ill, injured, convalescent, or disabled persons in hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, private homes, group homes, and similar institutions. May work under the supervision of a registered nurse. Licensing required.

Industry: Healthcare Practitioners and Technical

Other Job Titles for Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses:

• Realistic: Realistic occupations frequently involve work activities that include practical, hands-on problems and solutions. They often deal with plants, animals, and real-world materials like wood, tools, and machinery. Many of the occupations require working outside, and do not involve a lot of paperwork or working closely with others.
• Investigative: Investigative occupations frequently involve working with ideas, and require an extensive amount of thinking. These occupations can involve searching for facts and figuring out problems mentally.
• Artistic: Artistic occupations frequently involve working with forms, designs and patterns. They often require self-expression and the work can be done without following a clear set of rules.
• Social: Social occupations frequently involve working with, communicating with, and teaching people. These occupations often involve helping or providing service to others.
• Enterprising: Enterprising occupations frequently involve starting up and carrying out projects. These occupations can involve leading people and making many decisions. Sometimes they require risk taking and often deal with business.
• Conventional: Conventional occupations frequently involve following set procedures and routines. These occupations can include working with data and details more than with ideas. Usually there is a clear line of authority to follow.
• First Interest High-Point: Primary-Rank Descriptiveness
• Second Interest High-Point: Secondary-Cutoff/Rank Descriptiveness
• Third Interest High-Point: Tertiary-Cutoff/Rank Descriptiveness

• Observe patients, charting and reporting changes in patients' conditions, such as adverse reactions to medication or treatment, and taking any necessary action.
• Administer prescribed medications or start intravenous fluids, and note times and amounts on patients' charts.
• Answer patients' calls and determine how to assist them.
• Measure and record patients' vital signs, such as height, weight, temperature, blood pressure, pulse and respiration.
• Provide basic patient care and treatments, such as taking temperatures or blood pressures, dressing wounds, treating bedsores, giving enemas or douches, rubbing with alcohol, massaging, or performing catheterizations.
• Help patients with bathing, dressing, maintaining personal hygiene, moving in bed, or standing and walking.
• Supervise nurses' aides and assistants.
• Work as part of a health care team to assess patient needs, plan and modify care and implement interventions.
• Record food and fluid intake and output.
• Evaluate nursing intervention outcomes, conferring with other health care team members as necessary.
• Assemble and use equipment such as catheters, tracheotomy tubes, and oxygen suppliers.
• Collect samples such as blood, urine and sputum from patients, and perform routine laboratory tests on samples.
• Prepare patients for examinations, tests or treatments and explain procedures.
• Prepare food trays and examine them for conformance to prescribed diet.
• Apply compresses, ice bags, and hot water bottles.
• Clean rooms and make beds.
• Inventory and requisition supplies and instruments.
• Provide medical treatment and personal care to patients in private home settings, such as cooking, keeping rooms orderly, seeing that patients are comfortable and in good spirits, and instructing family members in simple nursing tasks.
• Sterilize equipment and supplies, using germicides, sterilizer, or autoclave.
• Assist in delivery, care, and feeding of infants.
• Wash and dress bodies of deceased persons.
• Make appointments, keep records and perform other clerical duties in doctors' offices and clinics.
• Set up equipment and prepare medical treatment rooms.
• Set up 24-hour Holter and event monitors, scan and interpret tapes, and report results to physicians.

Emerging Tasks

• Train residents, medical students, and other health care professionals.
• Conduct nutritional assessments of individuals, including obtaining and evaluating individuals' dietary histories, to plan nutritional programs.
• Provide clinical services and health education to improve and maintain the oral health of patients and the general public.
• Record and review patient medical histories.
• Fit, dispense, and repair assistive devices, such as hearing aids.
• Perform administrative tasks such as photocopying, filing, and managing office finances (e.g., monitoring budget, handling accounting payable and receivable).
• Plan and conduct treatment programs for clients' hearing, speech, or vertigo problems, consulting with physicians, nurses, psychologists, and other health care personnel as necessary.
• Provide information to the public, and advise educators and other medical staff on speech or hearing topics.

• Analyzing Data or Information: Identifying the underlying principles, reasons, or facts of information by breaking down information or data into separate parts.
• Assisting and Caring for Others: Providing personal assistance, medical attention, emotional support, or other personal care to others such as coworkers, customers, or patients.
• Coaching and Developing Others: Identifying the developmental needs of others and coaching, mentoring, or otherwise helping others to improve their knowledge or skills.
• Communicating with Persons Outside Organization: Communicating with people outside the organization, representing the organization to customers, the public, government, and other external sources. This information can be exchanged in person, in writing, or by telephone or e-mail.
• Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates: Providing information to supervisors, co-workers, and subordinates by telephone, in written form, e-mail, or in person.
• Controlling Machines and Processes: Using either control mechanisms or direct physical activity to operate machines or processes (not including computers or vehicles).
• Coordinating the Work and Activities of Others: Getting members of a group to work together to accomplish tasks.
• Developing and Building Teams: Encouraging and building mutual trust, respect, and cooperation among team members.
• Developing Objectives and Strategies: Establishing long-range objectives and specifying the strategies and actions to achieve them.
• Documenting/Recording Information: Entering, transcribing, recording, storing, or maintaining information in written or electronic/magnetic form.
• Drafting, Laying Out, and Specifying Technical Devices, Parts, and Equipment: Providing documentation, detailed instructions, drawings, or specifications to tell others about how devices, parts, equipment, or structures are to be fabricated, constructed, assembled, modified, maintained, or used.
• Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships: Developing constructive and cooperative working relationships with others, and maintaining them over time.
• Estimating the Quantifiable Characteristics of Products, Events, or Information: Estimating sizes, distances, and quantities; or determining time, costs, resources, or materials needed to perform a work activity.
• Evaluating Information to Determine Compliance with Standards: Using relevant information and individual judgment to determine whether events or processes comply with laws, regulations, or standards.
• Getting Information: Observing, receiving, and otherwise obtaining information from all relevant sources.
• Guiding, Directing, and Motivating Subordinates: Providing guidance and direction to subordinates, including setting performance standards and monitoring performance.
• Handling and Moving Objects: Using hands and arms in handling, installing, positioning, and moving materials, and manipulating things.
• Identifying Objects, Actions, and Events: Identifying information by categorizing, estimating, recognizing differences or similarities, and detecting changes in circumstances or events.
• Inspecting Equipment, Structures, or Material: Inspecting equipment, structures, or materials to identify the cause of errors or other problems or defects.
• Interacting With Computers: Using computers and computer systems (including hardware and software) to program, write software, set up functions, enter data, or process information.
• Interpreting the Meaning of Information for Others: Translating or explaining what information means and how it can be used.
• Judging the Qualities of Things, Services, or People: Assessing the value, importance, or quality of things or people.
• Making Decisions and Solving Problems: Analyzing information and evaluating results to choose the best solution and solve problems.
• Monitor Processes, Materials, or Surroundings: Monitoring and reviewing information from materials, events, or the environment, to detect or assess problems.
• Monitoring and Controlling Resources: Monitoring and controlling resources and overseeing the spending of money.
• Operating Vehicles, Mechanized Devices, or Equipment: Running, maneuvering, navigating, or driving vehicles or mechanized equipment, such as forklifts, passenger vehicles, aircraft, or water craft.
• Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing Work: Developing specific goals and plans to prioritize, organize, and accomplish your work.
• Performing Administrative Activities: Performing day-to-day administrative tasks such as maintaining information files and processing paperwork.
• Performing for or Working Directly with the Public: Performing for people or dealing directly with the public. This includes serving customers in restaurants and stores, and receiving clients or guests.
• Performing General Physical Activities: Performing physical activities that require considerable use of your arms and legs and moving your whole body, such as climbing, lifting, balancing, walking, stooping, and handling of materials.
• Processing Information: Compiling, coding, categorizing, calculating, tabulating, auditing, or verifying information or data.
• Provide Consultation and Advice to Others: Providing guidance and expert advice to management or other groups on technical, systems-, or process-related topics.
• Repairing and Maintaining Electronic Equipment: Servicing, repairing, calibrating, regulating, fine-tuning, or testing machines, devices, and equipment that operate primarily on the basis of electrical or electronic (not mechanical) principles.
• Repairing and Maintaining Mechanical Equipment: Servicing, repairing, adjusting, and testing machines, devices, moving parts, and equipment that operate primarily on the basis of mechanical (not electronic) principles.
• Resolving Conflicts and Negotiating with Others: Handling complaints, settling disputes, and resolving grievances and conflicts, or otherwise negotiating with others.
• Scheduling Work and Activities: Scheduling events, programs, and activities, as well as the work of others.
• Selling or Influencing Others: Convincing others to buy merchandise/goods or to otherwise change their minds or actions.
• Staffing Organizational Units: Recruiting, interviewing, selecting, hiring, and promoting employees in an organization.
• Thinking Creatively: Developing, designing, or creating new applications, ideas, relationships, systems, or products, including artistic contributions.
• Training and Teaching Others: Identifying the educational needs of others, developing formal educational or training programs or classes, and teaching or instructing others.
• Updating and Using Relevant Knowledge: Keeping up-to-date technically and applying new knowledge to your job.

Detailed Work Activities

• administer enemas, irrigations, or douches to patients
• administer injections
• administer medications or treatments
• analyze medical data
• apply appropriate physical restraint
• assist in examining or treating dental or medical patients
• care for mentally ill patients
• collect clinical data
• collect specimens from patients
• communicate technical information
• draw blood
• follow infectious materials procedures
• follow institutional care procedures
• follow patient care procedures
• follow patient observation procedures
• identify body response variations
• inventory medical supplies or instruments
• lift or transport ill or injured patients
• maintain dental or medical records
• observe patient condition
• obtain information from clients, customers, or patients
• prepare medical treatment room
• prepare patient reports
• prepare patients for tests, therapy, or treatments
• record medical history or data
• retrieve files or charts
• set up patient care equipment
• take vital signs
• train family members to provide bedside care
• understand properties or composition of drugs
• understand technical operating, service or repair manuals
• use behavior modification techniques
• use clinical sterilizing technique
• use emergency medical procedures
• use first aid procedures
• use hazardous materials information
• use interpersonal communication techniques
• use knowledge of medical terminology
• use knowledge of nursing terminology
• use medical lab techniques
• use nursing practices or procedures
• use personal care procedures
• use sanitation practices in health care settings
• weigh patients
• work with persons with mental disabilities or illnesses
• understand properties or composition of drugs
• understand technical operating, service or repair manuals
• use clinical problem solving techniques
• use counseling techniques
• use emergency medical procedures
• use emergency medical treatment procedures
• use grief counseling techniques
• use interpersonal communication techniques
• use knowledge of investigation techniques
• use knowledge of medical terminology
• use medical diagnostic techniques
• use medical equipment in direct patient care
• use research methodology procedures in health care
• use sanitation practices in health care settings
• write technical health or medical documents
• use medical equipment in direct patient care
• use medical lab techniques
• use psychological treatment techniques
• use research methodology procedures in health care
• use sanitation practices in health care settings
• write technical health or medical documents

Overall Experience
Previous work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is required for these occupations. For example, an electrician must have completed three or four years of apprenticeship or several years of vocational training, and often must have passed a licensing exam, in order to perform the job.

Job Training
Employees in these occupations usually need one or two years of training involving both on-the-job experience and informal training with experienced workers.

Education
Most occupations in this zone require training in vocational schools, related on-the-job experience, or an associate's degree. Some may require a bachelor's degree.

Examples
These occupations usually involve using communication and organizational skills to coordinate, supervise, manage, or train others to accomplish goals. Examples include funeral directors, electricians, forest and conservation technicians, legal secretaries, interviewers, and insurance sales agents.

• Average hourly wage (2007) -$18.24
• Average annual wage (2007) - $37,940.00

• Projected growth (2006-2016): 14.04%
• Projected need (2006-2016): 105,098
• Employment (2006): 748,605

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