Choose Your Nursing Role

Nurses Role

One role is the practical nurse, sometimes referred to as the technical nurse. This is the LPN/LVN. The other is the professional nurse. This is the RN. Both play an essential part as members of the health care team. Their roles and responsibilities vary. An RN can perform any of the duties of an LPN, but the reverse is not true. In some instances, an LVN’s skills at specific tasks may be more refined than those of her supervising RN. This can often be the case because the LVN has the primary responsibility for performing bedside nursing and tasks, while the RN is given a supervisory responsibility for the patient’s care and often forgoes the hands-on practice of direct patient care. RN training involves more science, math, patient assessment, critical thinking, and theoretical aspects than does the training of an LPN/LVN. This includes the nursing process, which encompasses the whole patient and his response to his illness as well as to patient treatment.