Principal Duties Of A Licensed Practical Nurse

Every profession has its duties and responsibilities. The duties vary from profession to profession. Even Licensed Practical Nurses have some prominent duties that they are obliged to do and take care of.

Being in the nursing profession demands a lot of hard work, compassion, and commitment. In order to lead a hassle-free and successful nursing career, there are several principal duties that all the LPNs are required to do.

Below-mentioned are some of the prominent basic duties and responsibilities:-

Administer a Patient’s Record & History

This is one of the primary duties that an LPN is required to do. It is an LPN’s job to administer a patient’s record and maintain a history of all the reports, appointments, tests, results of tests, etc. They need to maintain an appropriate Medical history of every patient.

Monitor Patients

This is another chief duty that LPNs perform. The Licensed Practical Nurses are also supposed to monitor a patient’s health and check their condition from time to time. They also need to inform the supervising doctors about a patient’s health, status and progress.

Change Wound Dressings

It is an LPN’s task to change the dressings of wounds and injuries that a patient might have suffered. Keeping a regular check on the healing of injury also comes under this duty.

Assistance to Patients

A Licensed Practical Nurse when learning nursing in LPN classes is also educated as to how they can help and assist their patients. They are taught how they need to help their patients in eating, getting dressed, bathing, and all such daily necessary activities. It is the most significant duty that LPNs do for their ailing patients.

Render Psychological Support

When patients face and undergo some kind of operations and checkups, they tend to get anxious at times. They might lose their control and may sometimes resist performing the medical procedure. In such cases, an LPN can prove to be of great support. LPNs can act as their support system in such situations by providing them emotional and psychological support. They can help the patients prepare themselves mentally for an operation or a medical procedure. This duty of LPNs can prove to be of great help in handling nervous patients.

Take Measurements

The next important duty of an LPN is to measure and maintain a record of a patient’s blood pressure, pulse rate, heart rate, body temperature and all such necessary factors that help in assessing and monitoring a patient’s health and progress.

Analyze a Patient’s Progress

An LPN must take care of a patient’s daily progress and improvement. They must also keep track of a patient’s fluid intake and output and prepare a medical progress chart accordingly.

Ensure Timely Medication

Another crucial duty of a Licensed Practical Nurse is to ensure the timely medication of the patients. They must always be alert to ensure that their patients take medicines on time and also take injections on the stipulated time intervals.

Collecting Samples

Collecting Samples for medical testing is another important duty that an LPN performs. It is a regular duty of an LPN to collect urine, blood and other bodily fluid samples of their patients for routine laboratory testings.

Communicate with Patients

Maintaining good communication with patients is also an important duty of a Licensed Practical Nurse. LPNs must know how to talk and converse well with their patients and their families to keep them updated about the progress, medication requirements, tests, etc. and also provide them the necessary support whenever needed.

Fulfilling an LPNs job effectively is quite challenging but once they maintain sync and balance in all the above-mentioned duties, no other problem can stop them from flourishing in this noble career.

So, if you are an LPN student or pursuing LPN courses, these are the principal duties that you will be required to perform diligently.

Also, if you are searching for night and weekend nursing programs, you can consider enrolling in LPN classes of Verve College. We provide Accredited LPN Programs along with Anatomy and Physiology Classes as well.

With our LPN nursing programs & night and weekend nursing programs, you can begin a prospering career in the arena of nursing.