Course helps corpsmen, medics become LVNs

[thedrifter]

Course helps corpsmen, medics become LVNs

By Emily Vizzo
UNION-TRIBUNE

March 21, 2008

When Marines and soldiers are wounded on the battlefield or during training, medical corpsmen and medics are often part of the team that treats them.

But vital medical skills developed in the military don't easily translate into comparable jobs in civilian hospitals.

In the fall, MiraCosta College introduced a course at Camp Pendleton to help active duty and retired Armed Forces Medical Corps members prepare for the state exam to become a licensed vocational nurse.

State law allows hospital corpsmen and Army medics to take the exam after completing one year of military bedside care and basic military medical training.

But the pass rate for first-timers who study on their own is only about 40 percent, said Julie Vignato, the MiraCosta College instructor who designed the curriculum for the new course.

That's despite the fact that many hospital corpsmen and army medics may have spent years caring for injured soldiers before acquiring jobs as medical assistants in civilian or military hospitals.

James David Arballo, 51, is a retired corpsman and MiraCosta College student who spent 16 years attached to a Marine Corps unit. He remembers assisting with a number of accidents while deployed or working on base.

During one deployment at sea, a Marine nearly lost a finger when he caught his wedding ring on a rearview mirror while hopping off a truck. Another time, Arballo stabilized a Marine while waiting for a medevac helicopter after a mortar misfire injured the Marine.

“Those are incidents just in routine training, not even so much in combat,” said the Oceanside resident, now a medical assistant at Sharp Mission Park medical group in Vista.

“As corpsmen, we go out and do what we can to try to save the Marines,” Arballo said.

This semester, the MiraCosta class is a 24-student mix of active-duty and retired corpsmen. Some arrive at the eighth-floor classroom at Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton still in scrubs from a 12-hour hospital shift or in camouflage fatigues and laced-up boots.

The teachers pepper technical instruction with stories from their experiences and ask students to defend or rethink responses to critical thinking questions.

“In the military medical field, they get a lot of practical experience,” said Latifah Davis, the MiraCosta instructor teaching the course and a former corpsman. “But they don't sit down and explain why you're doing what you're doing. I think when you understand the rationale, it sticks better.”

Corpsmen can enroll in the course to practice test questions and to brush up on procedures for preparing injections and monitoring catheters. Later, they can try for a license or enroll at advanced-placement level in MiraCosta College's three-semester LVN program.

“They've put in a lot of years as a medic or corpsman, and that should count for something rather than starting from scratch,” said Sandy Comstock, the college's Associate Dean of Health Occupations. “They liven up the class. They have experiences some of our students have never had and could not even imagine.”

The course runs at an accelerated pace, meeting weekly for a three-hour session so students can continue the shifts they work at Camp Pendleton, Naval Medical Center in San Diego and other locations.

“They bring quite a lot to the health care arena,” said Ann Shuman, supervising nursing education consultant at the California Board of Vocational Nursing.

“As a general rule, the military does a very good job of training them. They have some very valuable experience and education that they can draw on.”

The new class is one of two expansions within MiraCosta College's nursing program since last summer. The college launched a “Career Ladder” program so students can study for and earn an LVN license before eventually acquiring a registered nurse license. The average annual salary for an LVN is about $36,500.

The programs were partly funded by a December 2007 federal appropriation of about $335,000. The MiraCosta College board of trustees has authorized its staff to seek a $1.6 million federal appropriation to bolster the Camp Pendleton program.

The college plans to add courses at San Diego's Naval Medical Center in the fall and possibly at Veterans Affairs Medical Center of San Diego in La Jolla in the future.

The state's nursing shortage has narrowed in the past two years, in part thanks to expanded nursing programs, according to a study by the University of California San Francisco in September 2007.

LVN employment is projected to grow by 14 percent by 2016, the U.S. Department of Labor projects.

But the state's number of registered nurses per capita is still among the nation's lowest. North County has about 356 registered nurses per capita, compared with the national average of 798 per capita, according to MiraCosta College statistics.

There are approximately 2,200 hospital corpsman stationed at Camp Pendleton, said Lt. Raymond Bonds, division officer for the bases's multiservice ward. Some of those corpsmen are on the waiting list for next semester.

An LVN's responsibilities might include taking vital signs, dressing wounds, monitoring catheters and relaying changes in a patient's condition to a physician – duties that some students who are corpsmen routinely perform.

“We are LVNs in a sense, but we don't have a license,” said Ferdinand Chapoco, a newly retired hospital corpsman. Chapoco, 52, says he's using the GI Bill to pay for his classes. “It's an opportunity for me to challenge the LVN license, jumping from the military to the exam.”

Emily Vizzo is a freelance writer in San Diego.

Ellie

[DocGreek]

Drifter, I've read this article 4 times, and anyone, who IS serving, or HAS served, as a U.S.Navy Corpsman, knows that "fitting in", to the civilian medical community, is nearly impossible. Especially, those of us who have served in combat, with "The Few, The Proud.....The MARINES". Emergent care, is NOT the same as Combat emergent care, and becoming a nurse, E.M.T., or a P.A., is NOT the same! Let the civilian techs' walk in my shoes, for a day, or two! ALWAYS FAITHFUL....Doc Greek

[NickiP]

Hi Drifter,

Just wondering who exactly i can contact to get more info on this wonderful post you put out?! I am a former Corpsman, & i would love to attend this LVN program! So, if you could put me in contact with the right people that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.

~Nicole Porzse~

[Lynn2]

http://www.miracosta.edu/Instruction...ssionSheet.pdf

Doc , just put "Navy Hospital Corpsman to LVN" into your google machine and you will find some stuff on this program inc the link above.


Doc

[DanM]

Information on challenging the test and more is located here.

http://www.corpsman.com/forum/showthread.php?p=108158

[nurseexpert]

yes these are all good courses and i would like to suggest that american college of nursing is one another great source for nurses.